On racing’s egregious meter, steeplechasing is practically unsurpassed. These are the kinds of races you watch with an expectation of horses falling – and breaking. This past Saturday saw the 118th running of the Maryland Hunt Cup, a 4-mile race…
In horseracing, there is abuse – you know, the everyday stuff – and then there is extraordinary abuse. The “career” of a horse named Porfido (below) would fall into the latter. 11-year-old Porfido began racing before Barack Obama was sworn…
Last Friday, a nondescript horse named Cooper River ran a $5,000 claiming race at Laurel Park. (In fact, he was claimed.) The chart had the 6-year-old “very rank leaving the starting gate,” showing “poor action,” unseating his rider, and falling.…
Horses, the apologists say, are born to run, love to run; the modern Thoroughbred is the most exquisite of athletes, sleek and powerful, with, most importantly, an instinctive will to compete. Ignore, they continue, the diminutive humans perched atop, for…
Yesterday afternoon at slippery Freehold Raceway in New Jersey, the pace car lost control soon after the start of the 5th race and swerved, gate extended, into six horses, the last flipping onto the vehicle. Though an “initial inspection,” according…
Back in the spring of 2012, Governor Cuomo’s office ordered the New York Racing Association (NYRA) to investigate a spate of racing fatalities (30, in all) at Aqueduct’s 2012 winter meet. Ultimately, the Racing and Wagering Board (RWB) appointed a…
The following is a sequence of jump-racing pictures from Ireland. Although the Daily Mail reports both jockey and horse as doing fine, I can think of no more damning visual of the steeplechase than this… Zane Grey falls
Melodeeman was a seasoned veteran who had amassed over $250,000 in earnings when he entered the gate at frigid Penn National on January 21, 2010. Running for $18,000 (thanks to racino money) in a $4,000 claiming race, the Thoroughbred, who…