Go for Wand broke down in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Belmont Park; she was euthanized where she lay. Sports Illustrated’s William Nack penned a now-famous article entitled “Requiem at Belmont,” with the lede “ON A CALAMITOUS BREEDERS’ CUP DAY, THE CHAMPION FILLY GO FOR WAND SNAPPED HER RIGHT FORELEG, FELL TO THE TRACK AND HAD TO BE DESTROYED.”
“Calamitous,” indeed: Two other horses died at Belmont that day – Mr. Nickerson, of an apparent heart attack (at four), and Shaker Knit, who suffered “a severe spinal injury” after falling over the dying Mr. Nickerson and was subsequently “destroyed” – yes, they still used that word back then. Anyway, here are excerpts from that piece. (Toward the end, the trainer says, “They’ve had too many horses breaking down here lately. That doesn’t happen at Belmont Park. Maybe they’ve got the track too hard or something.” Sound familiar 30 years later?)
“Requiem at Belmont” (Sports Illustrated, 11/5/90)
“Go for Wand was lying on the racetrack near the winner’s circle, her eyes showing panic and rimmed with white, when all at once she stopped struggling and was motionless, except for the rapid rising and falling of her sides, like a bellows.
“Outrider Steve Erck was kneeling at Go for Wand’s head, his right knee pressed into her neck so that she could not rise, while a woman, crying hysterically, pleaded with him from behind a fence a few feet away: ‘Help her…. Please help her….’ It was chilly in the shade at Belmont Park, and steam rose from the filly’s moist, perspiring flank. Erck stroked the 3-year-old’s neck and face, and then he reached over and patted her on the nose. ‘Easy, girl,’ Erck murmured. ‘Just relax. It will just be a few minutes now. It’ll be over soon.’
“Trainer Billy Badgett’s face was ashen as he stared down at his filly. Her right foreleg, from the ankle down, was broken so badly it was bent upward, like the toe of a ski. Badgett knew what had to be done. He turned his back to the scene, and his eyes rolled up as he walked away. ‘Damn!’ he said. Badgett’s bride of three weeks, Rosemary, who is Go for Wand’s exercise rider, broke down and cried when she saw what had happened. ‘My baby,’ she wept. ‘Look at my baby…. I can’t believe this is even happening.’
“Indeed, on Breeders’ Cup day last Saturday at New York’s Belmont Park, an afternoon given over to celebrating the strongest and swiftest performers in thoroughbred racing, the event that everyone had been waiting for, the match between the two best females in the land, champions Go for Wand and Bayakoa, turned into a nightmare, a horror that left horsemen and horseplayers alike weeping openly.
“Just a few minutes earlier, as she was leading Bayakoa by a head at the 16th pole, with only 110 yards to go in the Distaff, Go for Wand suddenly stumbled. She pitched forward onto her knees, catapulting jockey Randy Romero over her head, and then did a somersault, ending up on her back, half under the inside rail, her feet flailing in the air as she struggled to turn over. Finally she righted herself and, as if trying to run away from the pain in her shattered leg, she staggered across the track on three legs and nearly fell. The crowd of 51,000 gasped, some averting their eyes while others watched in stony silence, frozen by the horror of the spectacle. Hundreds of fans pressed against the grandstand apron’s rail, trying to get near her as Erck caressed her and, finally, as a track veterinarian put her to sleep with a lethal injection.
“The Breeders’ Cup series of seven races, each with a purse worth at least $1 million, had begun ominously earlier in the afternoon. In the six-furlong Sprint, one of the fastest racehorses in New York, Mr. Nickerson, apparently suffered a heart attack while racing into the far turn. He collapsed directly in front of Shaker Knit, who fell over the dying horse. Jockey Chris Antley, on Mr. Nickerson, suffered a broken clavicle. Shaker Knit’s jockey, Jose Santos, was unhurt, but his mount, who sustained a severe spinal injury in the spill, was later destroyed. …
“So the Distaff was the race of the day, and until tragedy struck it was the epic race everyone had dreamed it would be. Go for Wand, the 3-5 favorite, dashed to the lead out of Post 2, but Bayakoa quickly joined her on the outside, and the two raced head and head through the first quarter, with Go for Wand a bob in front. They raced as a team down the backside. The filly opened a half-length lead as they passed the five-eighths pole nearing the far turn, but jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. asked Bayakoa for more juice as they made the turn, and the marc, digging down, edged back to within a head of Go for Wand.
“Belmont Park was beginning to rock. … In the grandstand, along the fence near the pole, Badgett strained to see over the crowd as the two horses raced past him. As they rushed past the pole, Go for Wand bobbled once. She grabbed the ground in front of her, as if trying to pick herself up, but then she stumbled again, this time falling to her knees and suddenly spinning, all neck and legs, in the air.
“Trainer Mike Freeman was walking toward the paddock and listening to Durkin’s call and the rising crescendo of noise when, as if someone had turned off a radio, he could hear nothing. ‘The place went silent,’ Freeman says. ‘Just like that. I knew something had happened.’
“In the clubhouse box seats, Mrs. Lunger’s son-in-law and racing manager, Richie Jones, bolted from his chair and sprinted down the aisle toward the staircase. He was screaming, ‘Oh, no!’ … As Romero hit the ground, he rolled over and looked up. He saw her mangled leg. ‘Oh, my god!’ he said. …
“Erck, on his palomino Mikey, was watching the race just past the wire. He saw the filly come to her feet and limp piteously across the track. Erck rode to her side, grabbed her loose left rein and jumped to the ground next to her. Unable to stand, Go for Wand was now on her knees by the outside fence and leaning against Erck. He could see the blood and bone of her dangling right ankle, where the suspensory ligaments had been ruptured and the cannon bone fractured. …
“Jones dashed over to the filly and, seeing the broken foot, put his hands over his ears and reeled back in anguish. Badgett joined him by the filly’s side. One look at the injury was enough. ‘I knew that was it,’ Badgett said. Turning away, he walked over to Romero, who was lying on a stretcher on the track. The rider, while uninjured, seemed to Badgett to be in shock. ‘She stepped in a hole, Billy!’ Romero cried. ‘She stepped in a hole.’ …
“Jones approached a New York Racing Association veterinarian. ‘Get it done,’ Jones told him. ‘Get it done as quickly and painlessly as possible, but get it done.’ Workers set up a large blue screen between the filly and the crowds, and Dr. Neil Cleary administered the injection. The filly was gone within a minute. …
“Dr. Jim Belden, former chief veterinarian for the New York Racing Association, later said that Go for Wand had actually fractured her ankle 12 strides before she went down. ‘Each step compounded the fracture,’ he said. ‘Her momentum, heart and determination carried her those last 12 strides. She sealed her own doom by continuing to run. Had she pulled up and said, ‘I ain’t gonna run no more,’ it might have worked out differently. But that wasn’t Go for Wand.’
“‘This was the soundest horse I ever had,’ Badgett said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. They’ve had too many horses breaking down here lately. Two broke down in races yesterday. Three yesterday morning, including Gorgeous. That doesn’t happen at Belmont Park. Maybe they’ve got the track too hard or something. I don’t know.’
“Badgett stood in the doorway of his shed. Stall 33, Go for Wand’s place, had a clean bed of shavings. The door was open and the webbing clipped to the door, as if awaiting her return. ‘This is not the way it was supposed to end,’ he said.”
I remember this all too well.
And Randy Romero died of all the abuse he put his body through to earn a dollar. At least he had a choice to stay away from the inhumane industry.
“Stepped in a hole”. And yet apologists will argue that horses break down in the wild, break down in other horse sports, and the biggest diversion of all, break down in their paddocks and pastures.
Yet none of these other locations are as groomed and manicured, harrowed, smoothed, and rolled like a racetrack. And we still don’t see horses break down in the huge numbers as they continue to do so on racetracks every day.
I see horses galloping along eventing courses, with easily 100 pounds more at times than these jockeys, and they aren’t snapping legs left and right. Does it happen? Yes. Very rarely. I’ve luckily never seen one, though to date I can think of at least 10 horses I saw personally die on the track, and probably at least 50 maimed to be nothing but unsound pasture ornaments. This summer I watched a hunter jumper show, with many OTTBs, who were jumping rather high jumps, at times coming down on one leg, with what I can honestly say were some morbidly obese riders, and yet they weren’t snapping legs off. Between the 3 days these horses showed, there were statistically hundreds of horses and rides, and yet, no snapped legs. Why is that? And the rings, though nice, were sure as hell not as groomed as our local track. There were holes. And, the majority of pastures in this area are bumbly as hell, and yet, anecdotally, I’ve heard of one horse breaking a leg in a pasture. Not much angers me more than to hear these apologist, diversionary idiots say “well they can break a leg doing something else too”.
How many thousands of racehorses have been killed and maimed since darling Go For Wand struggled and died horrifically in the dirt?? And yet we still hear that “it’s part of the sport”. What a damn shame able sport!
You said much of what I was thinking: Only flat racing has these problems to this degree. Go For Wand’s breakdown happened when I was a young child but affected me deeply. I wrote a paper on racing breakdowns a few years later for a science assignment and I still have her Sports Illustrated photos.
I totally agree, Peggy! There is no excuse for these horses breaking legs on the track like this If you look at the bones in the legs of these horses and consider the pounding they take in these races, it’s pretty clear to me that they are being bred to run and die. They race too young, they are raced too much and too hard. I have no sympathy for the owners, trainers and riders when they see this happening day after day, yet continue the same routine, killing more and more horses and saying “But we love them like our family!” BS!!!
NO horse should die like this had the hands of humans, NO HORSE.
Yet here we are some 20 yrs later with the same old bullshit going on…it is the definition of insanity. This is purely a gambling and money driven business, it will never be about the horses, and the claims of “sport” is just absurd, wake up people and see the truth for what racing truely is. This is why racing must go, no matter the jobs or the economic revenue , they cant stop the drugs, the “few” bad apples as they say, cant follow their own rules, and most importantly cant ensure the safety of the participants, it is use them for what they are good for and dumped when no longer needed or have been used up as much as they could. Lies,deception, and deceit, is all this industry has, and goes to the fullest extent to put on the facade that they are trying to do anything about it when nobody has the power to do so.
Exactly, Billy! I looked back at some of the first comments I posted in the paulick report- 6 YEARS ago- and they were in response to almost identical articles as what is in it today. Concerns about safety, corruption and race fixing, rashes of breakdowns, concerns over whip use, famous horses dying in famous races. And they want us to believe there’s been progress and change?! I see NOTHING new and improved.
Even since the congressional hearings in 2012 whats different, not much, still the same old bs, with the same old crap going on. If the powers that be gave a damn in anyway, things wouldnt be the way they are, it would hurt their bottom line and thats all thats really cared about, racing hasnt the will to do the right thing, and the powers that be dont truely have the power to change a damn thing. It is the only buissness ive ever seen with near impunity, and zero accountability, and long as the money is flowing thats all that matters, thats all this deal is about
Amen, Billy! Jobs and tradition are NEVER an excuse for animal exploitation. Nothing has changed in almost three decades except the memory of that horrific day at Belmont has begun to fade. Thanks to Patrick the carnage on the track that day are, once again, put into the spotlight. We must never forget!
It is just a shitty buissness based off of animal abuse, money and gambling, that the states accept for the same reasons, its been this way for a long time, and nobody wants to stop anything for the same reasons. Is there any wonder why noone cares about horse racing, and wants to be a fan and support it? Unless your a gambler that gets a thrill off of such things or you have a vested interest in it. They live under the facade of everything it will never be, but is always portrayed to be. And your right we must never forget, the first horse i ever seen breakdown was cuantos, that will never leave my mind, and gives me the gumption to not care and fight for the horses any and everyway i can
This is the definition of CRUELTY and BARBARISM…this is horseracing. Get the fuck rid of it NOW
I have a portrait of Go For Wand. What a travesty to die on the track running her heart out. Horse racing is evil. Every time I look at that picture of her my heart breaks and I tear up. So sorry, Go For Wand…they didn’t protect you…they failed you. You had no say.
I do t understand how we can live In this great country and can’t do something worthy of our people and stop this horrible practice? It heartbreaking.
What a breathtakingly BEAUTIFUL FILLY who did not deserve to have her life cut short,none of these INNOCENT SOULS deserve this crazy nonsense bullshit. And that’s exactly what it is F’n bullshit for mindless lazy ass humans. I’m pro animal anti dumbass
Words fail me, I am distraught at the abuse these regal creatures suffer.
I put flowers next to her dead body the day after the race. It was the least I could do for her. Both front legs were broken not just one as seen in the photos. I will never forget that horrible day.
Thank you Horseracing Wrongs for taking a stand to protect these horses. I totally support your cause in ending horse racing. I just wish it was ending soon so no more race horses have to die. .
Thank you, Mary.
Don’ t you wish we could save them all?
This, and Ruffian’s last race, was what turned me against racing.
The last horse race I ever watched. “Part of racing?” Really? Fucking bastards.