Dark week at Churchill Downs spawns questions about horse racing’s future

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The old days of horse racing are gone, which was easy to see in the aftermath of a traumatic week at the Kentucky Derby, Chuck Culpepper writes.

, about 10 hours before post time, owed to a bruised right foot, the kind of ailment shy of injury which very well might not have forestalled a run 50, 25, 10 or even five years ago. It happened after Forte had galloped and jogged under observation. It left some ticklish scenes.

, to relay in various interviews that Smith had said in discussions that Forte had seemed “a tick off.”By Sunday morning, it left a telltale rearrangement of a sentence from mega-trainer Todd Pletcher, spoken while Forte stuck his gorgeous head out of his stall down the way just before an angry thunderstorm kicked in.

And as the eight-minute interview with reporters wound down, the Daily Racing Form double-checked: Had Forte missed any work through Derby week?In some sense, the rearranging of priorities about horse racing has borne a slight parallel to the rearranging of those about American football. When Chuck Hughes of the 1971 Detroit Lions became the only NFL player to die on the field, with 1:02 left in a game against Chicago, the game carried on.

In the air beyond the barns, different and familiar statements emerged. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , for one, called for closure of the track amid its 14-race card on Saturday, given the death in the second race of Chloe’s Dream from a right knee fracture, and even before Freezing Point’s death in the eighth race from a left front biaxial sesamoid fracture.

 

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