The Kentucky Derby Rocks & Sucks

It's almost Derby Day!

I love the Kentucky Derby. I also hate it, but we'll get to that in a few minutes. Focus on the positive: People get dressed up in huge silly hats, drink drinks they'd avoid at any other time, and are captivated by two minutes of a sport they don't understand, but love anyway. Gorgeous horses, intense action, incredible backstories-- it's all on display at the races! May 5th people-- mark your calendars!

I have a confession: I make my Derby winner pick by how awesome the horse's name is. Here's this year's field of runners (subject to change of course) and my name judgement:

Awful:
Bodemeister
Daddy Long Legs

Interestingly, there really is a complicated, rule-filled process for naming racehorses.

Daddy Nose Best
Hansen
Went the Day Well
Dullahan

Boring:
Creative Cause
Gemologist
Optimizer
Prospective
Alpha

Not Bad:
Trinniberg
Done Talking
I'll Have Another
Liaison
My Adonis
Rousing Sermon
Take Charge Indy
Union Rags

Awesome!!
El Padrino (The Godfather)
Sabercat

I think Sabercat is the cooler name, but I also love the way El Padrino flops his big ears slightly out to the side when he runs, so I'm rooting for him:

And you know what? This is a totally legitimate way to pick a winner, because basically, the horses are all the same. No, I'm not talking about the fact that they're all young (three) and have had relatively few races by which to judge their performances. No, I'm not talking about the fact that they're all basically brown except Hansen. I'm talking about the ROT that has seeped into horse racing: inbreeding.

Every single horse on the Derby field is a cousin to his or her competitors. Not just a cousin in the way that many horses of the same breed are distantly related-- we're talking close family ties here.

Go back up and click on each of the horses' names. The links will take you to their pedigrees. What do you notice? The same names, over and over and over again! Northern Dancer, Secretariat, Mr. Prospector, Bold Ruler, Seattle Slew, War Admiral and their immediate descendents were bred and re-bred and then re-bred to those they sired, effectively making the racehorse gene pool as shallow as a Kardashian in front of a camera.

"I buy myself a gift every year, so this year I bought everything I wanted." -- Kim Kardashian

The little colored boxes show when a horse has direct inbreeding in their family tree. So on Alpha's pedigree, they show that Northern Dancer is Alpha's great-grandpa AND great-great-great grandpa, and that Native Dancer appears twice as well. However, those little colored boxes just scratch the surface of the truth. Northern Dancer's grandpa was Native Dancer!

Now go look at I'll Have Another's pedigree. Northern Dancer appears three times, and Raise a Native (Native Dancer's son) appears twice.

We've just been following the Native Dancer re-breedings within five generations. Now go look at how many times the other famous horses were re-bred into family lines!

If Thoroughbreds were humans, this is probably what they'd look like:

So why does this happen? Well, of course racehorse breeders want to win, so they breed to winners, and re-breed to winners, hoping the offspring will get the magical gene combination of their illustrious ancestors.

"Winning" in this case just means the ability of young horses to go very fast for a short distance. Breeding purely for disposable speed, not for soundness/health or genetic diversity, has led Thoroughbreds down a dangerous path. As well all know, breeding heavily for certain traits results in dangerous health problems. In Quarter Horses, there's HYPP, in Arabians it's SCID, in German Shepherds it's hip dysplasia, many bulldogs can't give birth naturally because of the big-headed thing, etc etc etc.

 Thoroughbreds are being bred to look like greyhounds-- thin bones, long pasterns, skinny bodies, etc. It increases their speed-- but the delicate physique also results in more injuries. Added to the inbreeding and being raced at a young age, Thoroughbreds aren't so much horses anymore as much as they are living toys-- produced to be played with, broken quickly, then thrown away. American racetracks are complicit in this crime, allowing trainers to dope their horses with pain-killers, respiratory boosters and other drugs to maximize their horses' performances. Articles here and here. (By the way, European racetracks are much more strict about the use of drugs, and have far fewer injuries on racetracks.) The end result is thousands of off-track thoroughbreds being euthanized after serious injuries sustained at a young age, or sent to slaughter by age six.

That's why, as much as I love the Kentucky Derby, I also hate it. I hate that we've taken the athleticism a horse is capable of, and reduced our largest event celebrating it to a two-minute sprint. I hate that we're ruining horses, and maybe even the Thoroughbred breed, to win that two-minute sprint. I hate the cruelty competition like this can result in.

I'd like to see racing become a more diversified sport. Let's do away with sprinting-only races; let's add in some jumping, some real distance and some trail obstacles. That would require breeders to breed for more diversified traits, like soundness, endurance, temperament and intelligence. It would also encourage them to wait to race horses until they're old enough to be able to handle that kind of race. Oh wait-- we already have that. The sports are called Endurance Racing, Competitive Trail and Limited Distance-- my favorite equine sports!

Horses Are Never Safe -- But They're Probably Safer With Humans

Annie has gotten more than one scrape, bruise or cut, and although she doesn't seem to care, each time I feel guilty. Animal liberation believers point to this sort of thing and say, "Hah, horses would be better off if left to their own devices! Don't ride/own horses, you're exploiting them!" As much as I don't really believe that, the sentiment strikes a chord in my guilt-ridden conscience. After all, a lot of harm is done to many riding horses, out of either ignorance or cruelty. A recent study, however, makes me feel a little better:

"Vet Rosie Owen of Liverpool University studied 652 randomly selected competition and leisure horses.

She found that 40% of horses suffered a “traumatic injury” — anything from a graze to a fracture — in the course of a year. Of those, 47% required veterinary treatment.

But what will come as a surprise to many horse owners is that 62% of injuries occurred while the horse was turned out in the field. Only 13% of injuries happened during ridden exercise, while 11% occurred in the stable."

 So basically, horses get hurt more often when they are left completely to their own devices-- if anything, they're more safe when they're least free! Kind of like children.

Of course, this is no excuse to go leaving junk in your pasture, or using barbed wire as fencing. It doesn't mean you shouldn't patrol for woodchuck holes out there. 40% of horses getting hurt each year is a lot, and we should do everything we can to reduce that percentage. But maybe we can feel a little less guilty when our babies get a scrape or a strain-- seems like it's pretty natural.

As for racing injuries, a huge fuss is made about thoroughbreds having to be euthanized when they break down on the track. I totally believe that thoroughbreds are too badly bred, raced too early and given too many drugs, all of which contribute to their untimely deaths or injuries. But I don't agree with the extreme viewpoint that horseracing itself is cruel.

When you look at racehorse deaths statistically, they're not too different from injuries and deaths in human sports. Racehorse Death Watch reports that in Britain, about 1.2 horses die every day due to racing-related trauma (we don't have good US data, surprise surprise). But human athletes die or are seriously injured with relative frequency as well.

Let's look at football (the American kind). This study shows that in high school and college football alone, at least one kid dies every year. TIME magazine reported that in Texas high school football alone, at least two kids a year suffer spinal paralysis-- injuries that horses would be euthanized for. An estimated 1.2 million football-related injuries are sustained annually, with serious fractures and concussions making up 15% of those injuries. It's even thought that there are a huge amount of brain disorders going undiagnosed among football players-- injuries which often lead athletes to premature deaths via accidents, drugs and suicide. And have you ever watched a football game and NOT heard about a player facing serious consequences due to an injury he received while playing? In short, while it's hard to get comprehensive statistics for deaths and serious injuries in any sport, it's pretty safe to assume that very bad things happen to people every day in football.

And those are humans, who have protective gear, who have the capacity to make complex judgment calls, and where everything possible is done to save lives even at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars, which isn't true in the case of most horse injuries.

I'm not trying to defend the worst parts of horse racing OR professional sports. My point is this: sports are just dangerous, for both humans and animals. Of course we need to do our best to minimize risk, but there will never be no risk. Any sport, from football and running to trailriding and racing, will have risk. We have to either accept that and move on, or ban horse and human sports entirely-- and I don't like the second option.

By the way, I got the green-highlighted statistic from blogger Susanna Forrest. She is a horse lover living in the UK, and constantly posts fascinating equine-related stories gathered from around the world (she found the study above from the UK publication "Horse and Hound"). If this study made you feel better about your horse keeping skills, or you just want to see cool horse stuff, visit her blog here:

If Wishes Were Horses