Last Saturday, Spanish Delight, said the chartwriter, “fell right before the wire and was transported off in ambulance” at Delaware Park. We now know that that was only half the story (I’m being kind). According to the Stewards Report, Spanish Delight in fact “suffered a catastrophic event and expired on the track.” In other words, the only thing the ambulance was carting was a thousand-pound dead mass (which helps explain why the replay was scrubbed clean). This poor girl was seven years old, and this was her 47th time under the whip – 10th this year. Her treat-them-like-family connections – Edward Madden, Pedro Nazario – also had her “For Sale” (cheap: $5,000) the day she died.
Another note on the above: Spanish died – again, right there on the track – in race 6. Of course, the final two races of the day continued as scheduled. Vile enough, but there was also this from the stewards for race 7: “Delay in post for all emergency equipment to exit the track and maintenance to work the track.” Can there be a stronger indictment of this ugly industry and its ugly people than that?
Speaking of the industry declining slowly but surely, another Thoroughbred breeder/owner passed away in California. Ninety horses will be auctioned off this month. Who knows how that will turn out but nevertheless there is one less person promoting this so-called sport that uses horses like Pepsi-Cola uses aluminum cans for their product.
You can get free tvg accounts and screen recording software so you have your own replays.
Thanks for the subject to search for Wanda. Some very interesting articles for reading with the upcoming hot weather here in the NW. 47 races that Spanish Delight had to endure over those years! How cruel. Glad to see this industry declining slowly but surely.
Marie, there are several vomit-worthy bits of information written about Ron Turcotte.
Q. Did Ron Turcotte burst a horse’s heart? The answer is online.
Another thing is that he couldn’t ride SECRETARIAT in his last race because Turcotte had been suspended from riding at Woodbine due to what someone wrote as riding “a nothing horse in a nothing race.”
I don’t know who wrote that line but it is extremely telling of what the priorities are of ‘the racing people’ and I find it vomit-worthy to no end.
They can hide the video but they can’t hide the truth. The truth is these people kill horses for racing and gambling AND should be in prison for Animal Cruelty and wanton destruction of horseflesh.
Poor mare, I had suspected this would be the case when I read how macabre her fall was. People commented that when she fell, her legs remained weirdly up in the air and that they’d never seen anything like it before.
Last night I saw that supposedly, Ron Turcotte, the jockey for the famous Secretariat, had been hospitalized. I tried googling to find out why. Instead, what I found was a 2008 article in which he was asked about his opinions regarding Eight Belle’s famous death. His opinions were telling, and gruesome:
“The tragedy was very sad, but it’s a part of the sport.”
“tragedy just grim reality”
“Rarely do the gleeful and ghastly arrive so closely together”
“Turcotte also twice was injured by horses that broke legs and fell.
“You hear that snap and it’s like a shotgun going off,” he said, recalling how he led one race by five lengths when the horse broke down. “It was ‘Pow, pow.'”
“Sometimes, the fine line between a win and the ultimate loss just gets crossed. [Turcotte] knows how the sport works, how smooth victory and vicious ending go hand in hand.”
“Vicious ending.” How telling.