RIP, Eight Belles

[CockroachTeaParty]

For any of you that watched the Kentucky Derby, it was a great race, but I cannot help but shed a tear for the runner-up, Eight Belles.

Coming in behind Big Brown, Eight Belles broke both her front ankles after she crossed the finish line and had to be euthanized on the track.

I raise my glass to Eight Belles, who came so close, only to forever leave the realm of horse racing forever... :smallfrown:

[reorith]

yeah, or it wasn't a great race, but instead a speciesist display of subjugation. race horses die all the time.

[Serpentine]

Damn. Poor horse. I generally really hate the rampant euthanasia for animals in general and race horses especially, but I really can't see how they could possibly heal this horse without it either being in incredible pain possibly for the rest of its life, or being anaesthetised for months on end, and still possibly being in incredible pain for the rest of its life.
Poor thing :smallfrown:

[Myshlaevsky]

I agree with you Serpentine, but given the lack of ability to care for an injury and the fact that, well, wounded horses get shot, I more or less find the sport morally abhorrent.

My dad took me to horse races when I was quite young (8 or so) and after one wherein the horse was shot I refused to go any more. An early indication of my vegetarian tendencies, I think - or a contributing factor towards them.

Still, yeah, it's a shame the horse is dead.

[Gaelbert]

RIP, Eight Belles.

On the brighter side, the horse that won is the son of a horse that my P.E. teacher raised and sold the son.

[Narthon the Bold]

They need to get some new genes into the bloodlines. A rule that no horse that has to take drugs so as to avoid bleeding out into its own lungs would be a good start for that.

The breeders are so afraid of loosing speed that this will never happen though.

[EmeraldRose]

My father in law had the race on, and we saw the brief bit where they showed her on the ground, before cutting away. We heard on the news later what'd happened.

I didn't realize she was in second place. But I still think it's so incredibly horrible....how sad! :smallfrown:

[skywalker]

Bah, cultural instinct towards eugenics in animals. DO NOT WANT!

Still, horses like to run and race. Very competitive animals. I don't find the sport abhorrent, but I do question the breeding. Why they even raced a filly in the derby(you can get thousands of babies out of a stallion, less than 30 out of a female) is beyond me.

Her life had to be ended tho. Very little chance a horse with two broken ankles could survive. It wouldn't survive in the wild either.

I wanna know how she broke both ankles in the first place. Holy crap.

RIP Eight Belles. You ran a great race.

[reorith]

They need to get some new genes into the bloodlines.

don't narthon the bold, i'm on it.

[CockroachTeaParty]

RIP, Eight Belles.

On the brighter side, the horse that won is the son of a horse that my P.E. teacher raised and sold the son.

Every day the world gets smaller and smaller... Did you know I'm only one Kevin Bacon degree away from Arnold Schwarzenegger? I was in a movie once with Vernon Wells, the main bad guy in Commando. And now I know somebody on the interwebs only a few degrees away from the Kentucky Derby champion.

[Serpentine]

Every day the world gets smaller and smaller... Did you know I'm only one Kevin Bacon degree away from Arnold Schwarzenegger? I was in a movie once with Vernon Wells, the main bad guy in Commando. And now I know somebody on the interwebs only a few degrees away from the Kentucky Derby champion.I used to be friends with Mel Gibson's nieces, and my dad's friends with a woman who was in a movie with Billy Connolly :smallwink:

[WalkingTarget]

On topic: I think animal breeding in general needs to be looked at with a very large microscope. We've got horses that are very fast, but have these little spindly legs (to the point where more tracks are using artificial surfaces because dirt is too stressful on the horses). As has been stated by others, this is unlikely to change due to the owners/breeders only caring about speed.

Off topic:

I used to be friends with Mel Gibson's nieces, and my dad's friends with a woman who was in a movie with Billy Connolly :smallwink:

One of my college buddies has a fractional Erdős number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number) (he participated in the research done by one of his professors which resulted in a published paper). I don't think he's technically has a finite number himself since he's not a co-author, but it's a connection of some sort.