Tragedy triggers tempest
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/225384/
Trainer Larry Jones’
nononsense attire is normally
dominated by an immaculate white cowboy hat. Seemingly, he was fitted with a black one after Eight Belles’ shocking death just after she finished second in the 134 th Kentucky Derby last Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.
Jones said the gutwrenching outcome of the Kentucky Derby — one day after winning the $ 500, 000 Grade I Kentucky Oaks with Proud Spell — turned what should have been the greatest weekend of racing in his life into a nightmare.
His private hell has gone public, too.
Jones has spent the last week defending the filly’s owner, Rick Porter, her jockey, Gabriel Saez, and, maybe most important, a body of work that stretches almost 30 years.
“It’s tragic enough just losing our horse,” said Jones, annually one of the leading trainers at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs. “That is something that is hard to get over. It’s not just because she ran like that. It’s hard to get over anytime you lose a horse that goes down in what I’m going to call the heat of battle, or doing its job. That’s tough. “ Then to get ripped for this kind of stuff, it’s unreal.” Jones said the world may never definitively know why Eight Belles, a strapping daughter of Unbridled’s Song, collapsed galloping out about a quarter-mile after the finish of
1 the 1 / 4-mile race. But it had nothing to do with drugs or the stress of tackling males for the first time, he said.
Jones said he believed it was simply a freak accident — Eight Belles stumbled and fractured one of her front legs, then fractured the other because it was bearing most of her weight.
“The horse just took a bad step,” Jones said. “I’ve had horses have [fractures ] because they’ve stumbled pulling up just because they’ve wanted to buck and play. They just took a bad step.”
Jones equated the surreal sequence of events to a young softball player failing to touch first base after hitting a home run.
“She stops to come back and touch the bag and either dislocates her knee or breaks it,” Jones said. “Was her coach a bad coach because he didn’t teach her to stop and turn and go back and touch the bag ? Was he a bad coach because he didn’t teach her to touch the bag perfectly each time she goes by ? Maybe the fault lies with her parents for letting her play a sport.”
Jones said he has been blindsided by hints that Eight Belles wasn’t a natural, that her imposing size and racing brilliance were the product of performance-enhancing drugs.
Steriods are still legal in many jurisdictions, including Kentucky, but Jones said he hasn’t used them on one of his horses since 1997.
All Eight Belles received before the Kentucky Derby, Jones said, were 3 cc’s of the anti-bleeder medication Lasix (a normal dose would be 5 cc’s ), Amacar, an adjunct bleeder medication, and bute, a non-steroidal antiinflammatory.
Jones said Eight Belles received bute 27 hours before the Kentucky Derby in order to eat and sleep well before the most demanding race of her career.
“It’s just like you taking an aspirin a day before you think you’re going to have a headache,” Jones said. “It doesn’t do a lot of good. We probably undertreated more than anybody in the race.”
Still, Jones said he requested that Eight Belles be tested for steroids to “clear his name.”
“I’m doing something that none of the other 19 participants in the Kentucky Derby is doing, or having to do,” Jones said. “Rick Porter pays a lot of high dollars to buy those horses that have that physical build.
“ I wish it was so easy that I could go out and buy a Shetland pony, pump it up with steroids, and become a thoroughbred. It doesn’t happen like that.”
Porter, who speculated Eight Belles’ fall could have been triggered by an aneurism, said a final necropsy report could be released within a week.
Preliminary findings confirmed Eight Belles did fracture both front ankles, Porter said.
The breakdown resulted in the first Triple Crown fatality since Barbaro succumbed to laminitis, a largely incurable circulatory disorder of the foot, in January 2007. Before Barbaro, 1993 Preakness winner Prairie Bayou was the last horse to be euthanized on the racetrack during a Triple Crown race, succumbing to multiple fractures in his left frong leg on a sloppy track in the Belmont Stakes three weeks later. Prairie Bayou was owned by Arkansas lumberman John Ed Anthony of Hot Springs.
Barbaro won the 2006 Kentucky Derby before breaking down shortly after the start of the Preakness two weeks later.
Barbaro struck a sympathetic chord with Americans, but that hasn’t been the case with the owner, trainer and jockey of Eight Belles.
“I think that the filly / colt angle is a huge reason why the connections are being vilified,” said Alan Mann, a thoroughbred owner and author of the popular Internet blog, Left At The Gate. “It sounds barbaric to those not familiar with the sport to throw the poor little filly in against the big boys. In fact, some people who are familiar with the sport seem to think it was barbaric, too.”
The notable fallout included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA ) calling for Saez to be suspended, a ban on whips, limits on races and the age of horses and replacing all dirt tracks with artificial surfaces.
“If Eight Belles would have come back and unsaddled, this kid would have been hailed the next riding sensation,” said Jones, who teamed with Saez, 20, to win the Kentucky Oaks. “Basically, he’s being accused of being a murderer. At least somebody got smart enough to say, ‘Hey, Gabriel Saez is not a murderer. Larry Jones is.’ It’s crazy what they’re accusing us of.”
But more than a week later, both Jones and Porter said they still firmly believe that running Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby was the right decision.
Eight Belles entered the Kentucky Derby unbeaten in four starts this year, including victories in a division of Oaklawn’s $ 50, 000 Martha Washington Stakes, the $ 100, 000 Grade III Honeybee Stakes and $ 250, 000 Grade II Fantasy Stakes.
Eight Belles’ resume entering the Derby included eight route races, more than any other horse in the field.
And her stride at the wire of last Saturday’s race, Jones said, was stronger than Hard Spun’s during his runner-up finish in the 2007 Kentucky Derby.
Porter and Jones also campaigned Hard Spun.
“If she would have staggered home 19 th and looked like she didn’t fit, then this happened, I would have been willing to take blame for a lot of stuff,” Jones said. “But I’m not going to take blame because my filly ran well, because she beat 18 colts, because my jockey was good enough to put her in a position where she had a trouble-free trip.”
Porter said he understands how Jones reached the boiling point. Now, he said he hopes the emotional healing can begin.
“I never thought anything like this would happen,” Porter said. “I guess I’m naïve to think not to worry about your horse getting hurt. You can’t race and worry about your horse breaking down each time you run a race. It wouldn’t be much enjoyment.”