Kentucky Derby death of Eight Belles looms over Preakness

The sport absorbed a devastating blow two weeks ago at the 134th Kentucky Derby, when Eight Belles suffered a fatal breakdown moments after she finished second to champion Big Brown.

It was the third death in two years of a thoroughbred who had run in a high-profile race -- the others being Barbaro, months after his 2006 Preakness injury, and George Washington in last year's Breeders' Cup Classic. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals called Eight Belles' injury and on-track euthanization "sad proof of the stress and rigors equines are forced to undergo in the racing industry."

The Derby incident has prompted outrage, debate and questions about why thoroughbreds seem to be breaking down more frequently -- doping, training, breeding and gender are the prime suspects -- and whether anything can be done about it.

In an initial response, the powerful Jockey Club announced May 8 that it had established a seven-member Thoroughbred Safety Committee.

Alex Waldrop, chief executive of the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn., the lobbying and public relations arm of the industry, greeted the action by saying, "The industry's No. 1 priority is the health and safety of the horse."

So far, however, the industry has struggled to agree even on the scope of the problem, much less on its causes or possible solutions. For example, there are currently no uniformly recognized statistics for on-track deaths.

One industry committee, headed by Florida racetrack veterinarian Mary Scollay, found 2.03 deaths per 1,000 starts on dirt tracks like the one at Churchill Downs. "Saturday doesn't reflect my experience with thoroughbred racing," Scollay said of Derby day. "I am there every day, and I see how many horses do race safely."

Nationally, that translates to hundreds of thousands of starts that end safely and several thousand that don't.

Bloodhorse.com, a leading racing website, has cited a slightly lower thoroughbred fatality rate of roughly 1.8 deaths per 1,000 starts in a study of California, Kentucky and Canadian tracks.

"We want this figure to be zero," said C. Wayne McIlwraith, director of equine orthopaedic research at Colorado State University.