Eight Belles And Probable Cause

Horse racing suffers another hard shot to the groin as we fathom the powers that be (are there any?) permitting this continuing parade of self inflicted suicide on national TV. My "Derby Worries" post of 4/29/08 stated my opinion of this vulnerable filly being entered in the Derby, and I stand by that. My purpose here is information instead of recrimination. I've lost a horse, one of my first. I know what's in Larry Jones' gut this morning, and despite the unrepentant remarks in his post race comments, this fellow seems to me one of the good guys in horse racing, and one of the candidates to be a leader in the sport. I feel certain that Jones is evaluating his own misjudgment vis a vis his owner. He's the one with the trainer's license.

I've reviewed the Eight Belles info available, race and workout videos, reports, analysis trying to fully figure out what happened here. Qualify everything below by "there's a lot that's unknown" which might change one's thoughts.

First we have Rick Porter's unfortunate pre-race comments to the effect that "every owner wants a Derby horse"indicating the decision to enter involved other than the welfare of the horse. There are Larry Jones comments about "we feel good about this", "we have considered everything", "she has the size to compete with colts" when in retrospect they obviously made a terrible misjudgment, failed to consider what is most important, and instead of reaching a responsible decision of running the horse in the Oaks or keeping her out altogether, got caught up in the emotion of the moment.

Yet, the decision here in some respects was a close call provided you ignored certain disturbing facts.

Jones had in his barn a horse which:

1. he trained.
2. he rode himself, huge in terms of judging fitness, cardiovascular efficiency and strength.
3. that in terms of talent seems a female version of Big Brown
4. a horse that seems comparatively easy on herself with a long flowing ground flicking stride.
5. that, as Jones correctly noted, was performance fit in all the various parameters. That judgment proved right on.

Thus, a horse that looks the part, runs the part and trains the part. Why avoid the entry? It seems the following were omitted from consideration:

1. The horse under any rational standard had insufficient works/races to have developed safe fracture resistance at max pressure of a 1.25 mile colt race.

Number of works/races for the year: EB, dead last with one half the work of the top colts. (see 4/26 post)
Number of furlongs worked/raced for the year: EB, dead last (4/27)

2. With a grossly insufficient foundation EB had her breeze/race workload doubled in the 5 weeks leading to the Derby in anticipation of the entry:

EB from 2/11 to 3/30, about 7 weeks, does 4 works/races. Between 3/31 and 5/3 i.e. in 4.5 weeks, she does 5 works/races. Between 2/11 and 3/30 she works/races 26 furlongs. Between 3/31 and 5/3 she works/races 32 furlongs.

3. EB's skeletal structure was utterly unprepared for the 1.25 miles of Derby pressure.

EB' races for the year were all but one runaways with a field frozen behind her. In those races the talented EB just lopes along. The one race with pressure involves only the final strides.

4. EB in Derby week exceeds the load on her lightly prepared skeleton.

EB does :58.1 on 4/26 and three and three days later is seen carrying 215 lbs in :14 to :17 second furlongs around the track. Those two workouts back to back would be enough to make me run for my Xray and thermography machines.