They are all sons of Bold Venture
This Week In The Drome: Tragedy at Steeplechase, Vandy climbs back in, and more ...
Opening Face-Off
Tradition v. Perdition: It is not an easy time to be a fan of horse racing.
While people still flock to the track — the vices of booze and gambling, no doubt, encourage the gates — the insidious underbelly forever shows itself. Breakdowns and overworked animals, questions about the humanity of using animals as athletes, accusations of doping and sponging, and Thoroughbreds, with centuries of husbandry breeding ever-lighter — and thus thinner — leg bones.
It is not new. Indeed, the greatest piece of sports writing in history was penned about a horse "destroyed" — to use the sanitized euphemism — after a breakdown at Jamaica in 1949.
And the tragedy at the Iroquois Steeplechase was different. This was not a horse who ripped a tendon or shattered a femur or caught heat stroke — it was just in the mid-70s at Warner Park, after all. This was a horse who died, suddenly, struck down by the randomness of an aneurysm.
Arcadius — his name classical — fell just minutes after winning the race and though he raised his head and shook his hoofs, he never rose again. It was a head-scratcher for the doctors and his groom and his jock and all of his humans; like Heinz's piece says, "It always happens to a good-legged horse."
And Arcadius was good Saturday. He bested Tax Ruling, the latest contender who has tried to win the 18-jump, three-mile challenge on Nashville's second May Saturday for a third time. And he is the latest who couldn't do it. Arcadius was better, breezing and stalking and challenging and navigating the fences and the water perfectly, surging late over the final fences and winning without much doubt.
Like Pheidippides, he ran the race of his life. And like Pheidippides he couldn't bask in his glory.
Those who see horse racing as barbaric will no doubt add this to the long list of dead horses, felled for our entertainment. But this wasn't that. This won't be editorial page fodder and it won't chase sponsors, and the talking heads won't have all-caps BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN moments with Arcadius.
His legacy is a win and a clutch of people who may never understand.
