“Our equine and human athletes’ safety is the Breeders’ Cup’s top priority.”Ībout 10 thoroughbred horses die a week at American racetracks, according to the Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database, and the scourge of drugs - painkillers and performance enhancers - has been acknowledged by industry leaders. “The death of Mongolian Groom is a loss to the entire horse racing community,” the Breeders’ Cup organizers said in a statement. The prescription was all too familiar: Mongolian Groom was euthanized and became the 37th and most high-profile dead horse at Santa Anita. The diagnosis was dire - a serious fracture of the horse’s left hind limb. Instead, an equine ambulance was soon barreling down the stretch and, as NBC broadcast to its prime-time audience a jubilant celebration in the box of Vino Rosso’s owner, Mike Repole, Mongolian Groom was loaded into the truck and taken to a hospital on Santa Anita’s barn area beneath the rouge-tipped San Gabriel Mountains. Unnoticed by most of the announced crowd of 67,811, however, was that a horse named Mongolian Groom had taken that dreaded bad step and was suddenly pulled up in the stretch by his jockey, Abel Cedillo, after establishing himself in third place and looking every bit like a contender to win North America’s most prestigious race. So, when the New York-based horse Vino Rosso crossed the finish line here on Saturday to win the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, the event’s marquee race and the final one on the card, the collective exhale of relief was nearly audible.
IRAD ORTIZ JR INJURY FULL
Through the 14 races run and nationally televised over the weekend as part of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships here at Santa Anita Park, anyone who loved this picturesque racetrack - or the beauty of thoroughbreds in full flight - held their breaths as one multimillion-dollar race after another concluded without a horse taking a bad step.Īfter all, 36 horses had died here since Dec.
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