NBC chooses to play up triumph over tragedy at Kentucky Derby

Eerily enough, about an hour before the unfortunate filly Eight Belles was euthanized Saturday, I imagined a similar fate for the designers of those absurd Kentucky Derby hats the rich and fashionable women wear at Churchill Downs.

Surely, the constant camera shots of the diva wannabes traipsing around in chapeaus the size of beach umbrellas must have been intended as comic relief. Nobody could actually believe they look anything but goofy in one of those upside-down bird nests, could they?

What appeared to be just another long Derby day given over mainly to fashion inanity and silly people flaunting their wealth turned deadly serious when Eight Belles broke her two front ankles shortly after crossing the finish line behind Big Brown.

This could have been the big story of the race, but NBC made sure it wasn’t. As the filly was administered a lethal injection on the track, cameras offered only a few fleeting, long-range looks at the carnage.

You can credit NBC with being discreet, but it’s just as likely that the network’s skittish decision was a craven act. There was a party going on, after all, with big hats and embarrassing celebration shots of Richard Dutrow, Big Brown’s trainer. Graphic pictures of a broken horse would only have dampened the mood even more.

Kathy Guillermo watched the TV coverage from her home in Northern California, stunned that NBC gave such relatively short shrift to Eight Belles’ fate. She’s been with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for 19 years, but there was a time when she showed horses, played polo and spent hours at the track.

“I once loved racing,” she said Sunday afternoon over the phone, “but like many people, I didn’t know what went into it.”

It took a “long journey,” she said, before reaching the point where she now believes racing horses “is about as cruel as anything we do to animals.”

No better than dogfighting?

“What really is the difference between racing horses and fighting dogs?” said Guillermo. “They’re both using animals for human entertainment. The animals end up broken down and dead in both sports.”

I know what some of you are thinking – there goes PETA again. This time it’s trying to compare horse racing with the savagery of dogfighting, as if Michael Vick rode Eight Belles over the finish line.

Whatever good it will do, PETA is calling for the immediate suspension of Gabriel Saez until an inquiry can determine if Eight Belles’ jockey used his whip too much down the stretch.

That’s all in a letter PETA is sending to the Kentucky racing authority asking for sweeping reforms, including preventing horses as young as 3 years old from racing.

“I don’t think anything will be done right away,” said Guillermo. “But I don’t think many people who watch racing want to see a horse lying dead in the dirt.”

This is at least the second high-profile breakdown in two years at a Triple Crown race. But for all the outpouring of sentiment Barbaro received after breaking an ankle at the 2006 Preakness, nobody seemed ready to attribute these sorts of injuries to animal cruelty.

PETA is now. Thoroughbred racing has been on PETA’s back burner in recent years, but with the image of Eight Belles lying dead in the dirt still fresh in everyone’s memory, “enough is enough,” said Guillermo.

Because racing is not a mainstream sport, except during Triple Crown season, you wonder what sort of traction PETA’s latest campaign can achieve, especially when so few horses suffer traumatic mishaps in front of the public.

The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition that various studies estimate there are 1.5 career-ending injuries for every 1,000 racing starts in the country , an average of two a day.

But that represents only a fraction of the problem, Guillermo insisted.

“Ninety percent of thoroughbreds end up going to slaughterhouses after their careers are over,” she said.

If this is true, you’d never know it from the oft-told stories depicting the affectionate bond between owners, trainers, jockeys and the animals.

“I don’t have any doubt that the people who raise and train these horses love them,” said Guillermo, “but the facts don’t speak well of that love.”

Aren’t these horses born to run?

“There’s nothing more beautiful than seeing a thoroughbred run,” she said, “but from now on I’d like to see them running in a field.”

Bob Molinaro, (757) 446-2373 or bob.molinaro@pilotonline.com