In keeping with the theme of yesterday’s post on Laurel, two tracks that had been silenced because of the weather last week gave it a go Monday – with predictable and possibly (likely) tragic results.
At Mahoning, in 22-degree temps (without windchill) and on a track the chartwriter described as “frozen,” Predecessor “stumbled over [his] knees at the start” and did not finish. This was the 4th race; the final four races of the day were then canceled. In fact, there were also incidents in each of the first three races: in the 1st, Princessofthenorth “stumbled at the break”; in the 2nd, Lady Indya suffered a “very bad stumble at the start”; in the 3rd, Land Mark Deal “hit gate [and] veered out at the start.”
In the 2nd race at Parx, Flower Mound was “injured after the wire and transported off in the ambulance.” That combination (injured/ambulance), as regular readers of this site well know, almost always translates to dead. Parx, too, then canceled the rest of its card.
Who whines the loudest to get the racetrack management to go ahead with the race card in Arctic blast weather conditions no matter how insane or illogical it is?
As you say, Nancy, they stopped the day’s racing pretending to be so concerned for the welfare and “safety” of man and horse. As if they didn’t see that coming…
Who knew racing horses in frigid weather conditions could possibly add extra elements of danger to the whole morbid affair? Duh, let’s go try this thing and see what happens because “everybody knows” that we take “amazing care” of the horses. AND if any jockeys refuse to ride, we can just replace them with someone else who is waiting to get a mount.
Wanda, We have galloped horses in early 2004 that had the track freezing under the horses hoofs as we were galloping! The idiot horse people went ahead & entered their horses for the next days races! The freeze was so bad for 2 weeks that major hwy.s were closed down & the truckers were stranded at several locations. Of course we horse people could not get to the track to care for the horses. 2 guards & a handful of people who lived at the Portland Meadows trailer park to care for hundreds of horses dealing with frozen water lines. We were froze up for days.
The old adage “keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best”. Also I will add these tracks announced they were shutting down the remaining races because they cared so much about the safety and well-being of man and horse. NO MENTION of the incidents that caused this decision either.
This is what the racetrack management must be thinking: “What are gambling chips for except to gamble? Let the daily routine mistreatment of horses continue until people stop gambling on horses even when the weather is good.”