Another Non-Baffert Horse Dead at Belmont

Another day, another dead horse at a New York Racing Association track – although this one happened a week ago and is only now being disclosed by the Gaming Commission. Devils Dare “was found [in Belmont stall] by trainer unable to stand…euthanized due to health issues.” What those “issues” were the Commission does not say. We do know that Devils was two years old and coming off his first race, at Aqueduct in December. Meanwhile, NYRA, they of 1,000 dead horses since 2009, continues its massive exercise in misdirection by going after a single trainer, Bob Baffert, for “[taking] a wrecking ball…to the integrity of the sport.” Wow.

Subscribe and Get Notified of New Posts

6 Comments

  1. The way I understand it, “a wrecking ball” in horseracing consists of breaking the rules and regulations of racing, especially doping-to-win in a way that blatantly disregards the rules. Baffert “earned” the nickname of “Teflon Bob” with the help of his enablers and fellow rule-breakers over a period of time. As demented as it is, it is not exactly against the rules and regulations of horseracing to actually kill horses. If a trainer kills his horse and is “in good favor” with the organization that facilitates the abuse and neglect, pain and suffering to the horses, and consequently the killing and dying of horses, the organization will evidently gladly cover up and/ or leave out revealing details to protect their bloody, horse-killing sport that creates revenue for them.
    If the NYRA does successfully ban Bob Baffert from their racetracks, the “BloodHorse” and the other racing industry publications will eventually have to report on something else that the NYRA is doing, such as whining about why they think the Video Lottery Terminal payments belong to them.
    Whoever the next stakeholder in horseracing is that manages to besmirch their own reputation could bring more of the facts out of why horse racing should be defunded.
    California has the highly esteemed (highly esteemed by the CHRB), although disgraced, Jeff Blea to show how the horseracing industry is only protecting the bloody, horse-killing “sport” of racing and wagering on horses. Baffert has been disgraced for a long enough period of time that he should be banned everywhere, but horseracing itself should be banned everywhere.
    Horseracing itself has been killing horses for centuries, whereas “Teflon” Bob Baffert has been killing horses for decades (as opposed to centuries).

    • Nobody except the highly credible, super-transparent CHRB will ever know the answer to that question. And they ain’t talking.

    • The number of Thoroughbred foals born and reported as live births (in North America) has declined, according to a “BloodHorse” article. The Jockey Club reports the numbers in October so I am wondering how accurate their numbers are for the entire calendar year.
      The numbers of live births in North America for 2020 was 19,677 and for 2021, the number is 19,021 but projected to be 19,200 or 19,201. The article gives the number of stallions and mares used for breeding per year. It appears that the number of live births is down from 20,000. I take this as a ballpark figure. It gives a person an idea of how many horses are killed from the number of horses that are born. A large percentage of horses that are produced by the horseracing industry are sent to slaughter.
      I would not ever expect the racing industry stakeholders to disclose accurate numbers of horses dumped into the slaughter pipeline or shipped directly to slaughter or killed in any other way by the industry that produces them solely for racing and wagering.

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: