Echo Zulu, you might remember, suffered multiple fractures while training at Santa Anita last October. Echo was a $2.6M-earning “star,” and this was big news for the racing press. Her exploiters, of course, went into preservation mode (lucrative breeding beckoned), and she endured a subsequent surgery. Up until Sunday, she had been stationed at a hospital in Southern California, still “recovering.” Now, however, she is dead. This (in the Thoroughbred Daily News) from David Fiske of Echo’s ownership:
“What I was told…is that she got cast in her stall [Sunday] evening and broke her leg above the plate that had been inserted, and [worsened the injury] trying to get up. There was no real option other than euthanasia.”
Industry casualty? You bet. And all the more egregious for this poor girl’s extended suffering. Echo, below, was four years old.
As usual with the reports of abuse and neglect of racehorses, there are lots of holes in the story. I agree with you! They could have had cameras watching her every move 24/7 but also a person on duty who would know what to do (and would do whatever needed done) in the event of anything happening that would require assistance to keep her from further injury. It was an expensive attempt to prolong her life after all.
She was at a vet clinic, not at the track. I can’t believe there wasn’t cameras watching her every move
A person might think that they were “heartbroken” because they can’t torture her anymore. Of course, they are not seriously heartbroken. This is standard routine mistreatment of a top level racehorse. Causing harm and death to horses is who they are and what they do; it’s how these greedy pseudo horsemen roll.
Yes, and she wholeheartedly complied til the bitter end:(
But racing fans refuse to see it that way, of course. They all claim to be “heartbroken” over her death. (Not by her pre-Bleeders’ Cup injuries back in October, and her four months of medical torture since.)
So sick…died in her concrete jail and never got to live like a horse. Poor baby.
The eyes are the windows to the soul, and there is no life in that poor girl’s eyes – they are flat and distant, even taking into account her injury. It’s terrible to say, but her death was a blessing in a way, sparing her years of extended confinement and exploitation as a broodmare.
Asmussen family brood mares have a habit of ending up in the kill pens anyway. It’s so sad she died this way, but it wasn’t guaranteed not to be worse even if she lived. Steve Asmussen better c all his attorney Maggi Moss – she will get him out of this mess. He is the same one PETA did the expose on, you would think they would be all over this. “Funny” – crickets on their end. XOXO
She was born to suffer at the hands of money-grubbing people.