Yesterday afternoon at Aqueduct, 4-year-old Cuantos broke down in the 1st – dead where he lay. The ugly kill can be seen here (Race Replays, Wednesday, Race 1 – pick video up around 1:00 mark – Cuantos was out in front; slow-motion at 4:40).
A half hour later at Tampa Bay, 7-year-old High Native Fly broke down in the 3rd and he, too, was euthanized on the track.
The dead’s people:
Cuantos – Mark Hennig, Alan Brodsky, Gee Zee Stable, Junior Alvarado
High Native Fly – Maria Bowersock, McLaughlin Family, Ronald Dale Allen Jr
This is horseracing.
Cuantos had five starts then an entire year off – yesterday, when he horrifically broke down and subsequently died, was only his 4th race back after a full year off. I strongly suspect he was not sound…running INJURED.
Joy, agree.
There are recurring precursors to catastrophic breakdowns: 1. Long lay-offs. 2. Older horses with back class and many starts 3. Finishing out of the money by 15+ lengths with short turn around times. 4. Harsh whippings/beatings to get them to perform.
One can assume that most of these horses were given drug cocktails to address their ongoing lameness issues. Of course, Lasix is touted by the pro-horse racing community, but is one of the most overlooked, with deadly consequences when combined with other allowable race-day drugs it seems.
Put all the pieces together and you have a recipe for disaster as confirmed by the death statistics on this blog.