A Dominating Finish by Big Brown and a Tragic End for Eight Belles
By BILL FINLEY, New York Times
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After running the race of her life, the filly Eight Belles finished second behind Big Brown in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, then collapsed after the finish line and had to be euthanized.
According to the veterinarian Dr. Larry Bramlage, Eight Belles, the only filly in the field, broke her front ankles when pulling up after finishing four and three-quarters lengths behind Big Brown.
“There was no way to save her,” said her trainer, Larry Jones. “She couldn’t stand. There was no way to even think about trying to save her.”
Jones was visibly shaken as he spoke to reporters at his barn on the Churchill Downs backstretch after the race. A veteran horseman who won Friday’s Kentucky Oaks with Proud Spell, he had difficulty handling what happened to Eight Belles.
“These things are our family,” Jones said. “We put everything into them that we have, and they give us everything they have. They put their lives on the line, and she was glad to do it.”
Eight Belles was also entered in the previous day’s Oaks, but the owner Rick Porter had so much confidence in her that he decided instead to take on the male horses in the Kentucky Derby. It would be a daunting task. Only three fillies have won the Kentucky Derby in its 134-year history, and none since Winning Colors in 1988.
Jones said he feared some would come to the conclusion that taking on males in a race as difficult as the Kentucky Derby was a mistake. He insisted that the difficulty of the Derby and the challenges she faced had nothing to do with the outcome.
“He’s taking it pretty rough,” Jones said of Porter. “I’ll tell you, you’re going to get criticized and second-guessed. There is going to be somebody who will come up with the idea that the filly shouldn’t have been in there. It wasn’t the race. It wasn’t the fact that there was 19 boys in there. She ran. She never got bumped. She never did anything. She could have done this racing against Shetland ponies. It wasn’t in the race where it happened. He’s taking it hard, and he’s going to be second-guessing himself from now on.”
Porter was right, Eight Belles was up to the challenge of competing against 19 of the best 3-year-old male horses in the country. Ridden by Gabriel Saez, she was no match for the Richard Dutrow Jr.-trained Big Brown but was easily second, finishing three and a half lengths in front of Denis of Cork.
“You don’t know why it happened,” Jones said. “She ran a whale of a race, the race of her life. She ran great.”
Eight Belles came to a stop about three-sixteenths of a mile past the finish, where Saez dismounted. After briefly standing, Eight Belles collapsed to the track. The horse ambulance and a crew of veterinarians quickly arrived, but the veterinarians said there was nothing they could do to save her life.
“She didn’t have a front leg to stand on to be splinted and hauled off in the ambulance, so she was immediately euthanized,” said Bramlage, an on-call veterinarian representing the American Association of Equine Practitioners.
Typically, horses break down during the race or shortly after crossing the finish line. It is so rare that a horse breaks down well beyond the finish that Bramlage said it was the first time he had seen a catastrophic accident happen that way.
“The difficult thing to explain with her is it’s so far after the wire, and she was easing down like you’d like to see a horse slow down by that point,” he said. “And then all of a sudden, it goes over the brink in both legs. I don’t have an explanation for it because I have no background to draw on.”
Eight Belles was an undistinguished 2-year-old filly who had won one of five starts. She turned a corner this year, winning her 3-year-old debut by 15 lengths. She kept progressing, winning all four of her starts, including the Fantasy and the Honeybee Stakes at Oaklawn.
Porter decided to enter the Oaks as a backup plan in case Eight Belles drew a poor post in the Derby. When she drew No. 5, the owner and trainer declared that she was a certain Derby starter and remained confident throughout the week that she belonged in the Derby.
“She went out in glory,” Jones said. “She went out a champion.”
Eight Belles won five of nine career starts, earning $308,650.
Though horse racing has had a number of high-profile breakdowns in recent years, the Kentucky Derby had not been plagued by serious accidents or injuries over the last few decades.
On Friday, Chelokee, a horse trained by Michael Matz, broke down in the Alysheba Stakes. Bramlage reported Saturday that Chelokee was doing well and may survive. Matz is the trainer of Barbaro, who won the 2006 Kentucky Derby only to break down in the Preakness and eventually be euthanized.
yeah, I was really gutted when I saw this. I don't even follow horse racing, watch the Grand National every year and that's it - but always most importantly willing all the horses to get through unscathed!
It reminds me a lot of McKelvey at the 2007 and 2008 Nationals. I remember seeing him finish second last year then being really worried when he went down, and relieved when he was ok. Then he wasn't so lucky this year :(
I really find the fact they're so quick to put horses down hard to swallow. I've heard all the arguments a million times, but still feel killing an animal because of a broken leg is pretty harsh.
Pretty sad. I saw her fall and knew it wasn't good. Later I saw an interview with the trainer. He broke down when he said she made them all proud. Sad stuff.
