That said, a greater use of science in dirt track maintenance in recent years has improved the safety of these surfaces. Indeed, inclement weather and racetrack inconsistency were highlighted as possible causes for spikes in fatalities at two other tracks, Saratoga and Aqueduct, in recent years.
And that information can be vital. For example, the summer meet at Del Mar racetrack in southern California was beset with a high number of horse deaths. The following year, Del Mar instituted a variety of drastic changes , including a measure designed to identify and much more thoroughly evaluate at-risk horses before they ran.
The last two summers, fatalities at the track have been markedly down. The kinds of steps that Del Mar took are far from broadly replicated nationwide, however. But track surfaces and databases are only two parts of the equation, with medication also attracting attention. But only 12 of the 33 relevant racing jurisdictions have adopted the program in full.
Silver trays of fresh pastries, plates of smoked fish on tiered serving platters, and carafes of hot coffee line two sides of the conference room at the racetrack where 30 horses died in a six-month period ending in June of this year. This is Belinda Stronach. The year-old native of Aurora, Ontario—blond, wearing a fitted blue zip-front jumpsuit cinched with a black Gucci belt—is here today to discuss those horses and what is to be done about them.
Specifically, what is to be done about the situation she finds herself in as the head of the company that owns the track where they were killed. The deaths led the world—the Los Angeles district attorney, the California state legislature, the governor, members of Congress, and anyone who read the news—to cry tragedy and the sport of thoroughbred racing to wonder if the disaster represented its death knell.
Alone before a brunch spread fit for dozens, Belinda beckons toward the narrow end of a long oak table. Families fight. Companies evolve, sometimes painfully. Major sports are industries that endure crises the way others do.
And now, to make matters worse, two more horses have died, both in September. Belinda was once a rising star in Canadian politics, winning election to Parliament as a Conservative in before defecting to the Liberal Party a year later—a shocking move even in a cutthroat world.
I like to sleep at night. The dirt bakes in the late July sun. The parking lot is nearly deserted. Peaceful and beautiful: the Art Deco grandstand, the palm trees, the mountains. Documents from his ongoing investigation into the deaths at Santa Anita are stacked high on his desk—among them the results of the necropsies for all the fatalities.
Most of them repetitive stress injuries. Just the number of them. However, Santa Anita was not even the deadliest track in the United States in Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, had a far higher fatality rate, according to an investigation by the Louisville Courier-Journal.
The mounting death toll received some coverage, but this incident seemed different. This suggested problems with training practices, or the track itself. Or both. Last winter was not just unusually cold and wet in California—a series of weather phenomena called atmospheric rivers caused torrential rain and flooding, particularly in February. Since a bronze statue of Seabiscuit has greeted visitors to Santa Anita.
The horse recovered from a serious leg injury at the track in , then won the final race of his career there the following year in record time. Arthur has described the tragedy at Santa Anita as a perfect storm—a confluence of awful weather, unfit horses running, pressure to fill races, and a lack of caution by multiple parties. Some are hooked by the transactional side—the betting, the breeding, the stakeholding, however small.
Or, in the case of John Campo, all of the above. For Campo, horse racing was first a refuge, then a place—perhaps the only place—where he could be king. Can you picture me as a big executive? Between that view and his relentless watching of Roy Rogers movies, his fondness of all things equine blossomed into true romance. Such focus, though, extended to little else; Campo dropped out of high school. Instead, he went to work at the track.
Campo started as a hot walker—a stable worker tasked with accompanying overheated horses after workouts—for Lucien Laurin, the French Canadian jockey who would go on to train Secretariat. Moving from one outfit to the next, he graduated to groom and then, in his mids, to assistant trainer, working for the well-respected Eddie Neloy, who taught Campo how to assess horses as well as the finer points of handicapping. Campo, for his part, came up with an innovative, if controversial, technique for cutting out frogs—the spongy, heart-shaped growths on the underside of hooves—to relieve swelling and pressure.
In the late s, still with Neloy, Campo found himself handling Buckpasser, an all-time great thoroughbred, and quickly showed a sixth sense for training. Campo was less companionable with humans. He stuck out his chest and, at 5' 7", threw around all of his pounds.
The Fat Man, as Campo proudly called himself, stomped around the barn in a T-shirt, puffing cigars, and transformed horses who had been written off into champions. He boldly predicted in that he would saddle winners in New York, something that only one trainer had ever achieved. That trainer, Buddy Jacobson, would make headlines later for other reasons: In , his girlfriend left him for a neighbor.
Jacobson was convicted of second-degree murder and spent the rest of his life at Attica. By the s, Campo was still top in class. And it was still considered heretical to say so.
He cut a fiercely polarizing figure as he pulled up to his stables in a silver Mercedes, barking orders and whistling at women. But his devotion to his work, and his results, were not open to dispute. In March , Campo received a call from a frustrated horse owner not known for his patience or passivity. The placidity of that estate was interrupted forever on May 5, Eerily, almost exactly one year after that death came a startling birth. Evans owned a series of fine horses, and this marked the arrival of perhaps his finest yet—a tall, lop-eared, brown beauty with a spidery mark on his flank.
Sired by His Majesty, Pleasant Colony was blessed in both heredity and environment. Evans made a bold decision. When Evans hired Campo right , Runkle left was roped in on the ride. He dispatched an entire team to Virginia, including his veterinarian, to examine the horse. She later determined that he looked undeveloped, all legs and no girth. Pleasant Colony put muscle on his tall frame almost 17 hands high , improving both his endurance and durability.
In a strikingly short time the stable had extracted greatness out of mere potential. Swaggering around Louisville in a Kentucky Wildcats cap, he told anyone within earshot that the winner resided in his barn. Thomas Mellon Evans finally had his Derby champion. So did the inimitable Johnny Campo. Campo took the bait.
We won easy. How, McKay wondered, had Campo been so clairvoyant? I win. Pleasant Colony seventh from left got an extreme makeover, and the result was a win in Louisville. Runkle had made history before the race even began: She was the first female veterinarian ever to care for a Derby entrant.
And then her horse won. But her happiness mingled with darker emotions. Decades later, her sisters describe a picture taken around this time, the equivalent of a team photo.
When Runkle received a print, her sisters say, she wrote on the back: Surrounded by evil men on the balcony. Even the colt projected self-belief. Hours before the horse race, when thoroughbreds tend to need calming, Runkle found Pleasant Colony snoring in the barn.
At the starting gates, he betrayed no concern for the crowded field. Suddenly Pleasant Colony was a mile and a half from becoming the 12th Triple Crown winner—and this unlikely horse, with its unlikely entourage, made for an irresistible story.
In , then only 20, he won more races than any other U. What happened, Ciulla was asked in court, when a jockey failed to deliver on a paid fix? But within horse racing, the reputational damage was significant. He lost his next three starts, but then won an allowance race at Evangeline Downs and two races later he captured the Lafayette Futurity.
That stakes win, though, would be followed by a prolonged losing streak that reached 10 straight starts. John Henry was turned over to trainer Robert Donato. Shortly after that, Donato made one of the most astute decisions in racing history. There were no takers that day, thankfully for Rubin and Donato, as John Henry romped to a length victory.
He won an allowance race in next start and soon was racing in grass stakes. In his fourth try at a stakes event on turf, he demolished eight rivals by 12 lengths in the Grade 3 Round Table Handicap at Arlington Park. In , John Henry was transferred to trainer V. John Henry had two seconds and a win in his first three starts for McAnally and then reeled off six straight wins, all of them in graded stakes and three of them in Grade 1s. In recognition of his accomplishments, John Henry was named the champion turf male of and received the first of seven Eclipse Awards including two Horse of the Year titles.
At the age of 6, he started 10 times, won eight races, including six times in Grade 1 stakes. Foremost among the Grade 1 efforts was a victory in the Jockey Club Gold Cup when he prevailed by a head over another ex-claimer, Peat Moss, in classic duel to the finish line.
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