Racehorses and their trainers share dirty little secrets. Intimate details about equine body parts ogled more closely than a HS boy looks at a Sydney Sweeney poster. In attempting to distort the perspective of prospective claimants, horsemen employ unnecessary bandages, start false rumors, guard shedrows like fortresses, and swear gallop boys to a code of omerta.

​

Most active thoroughbreds develop infirmities and suffer pain. Forget syrupy "born to run" pablum best consumed to a backdrop of "My Old Kentucky Home." No horse not featured in beer commercials is sturdy enough to painlessly transport screeching humans over not-so-forgiving surfaces. Not even derby runners.

​

Yet their connections-and a gullible press-would have us believe that nothing more ominous than a spiked fever (foot issues are another favorite) or "low blood count" has ever compromised a prominent three-year-old. I always chuckle at articles blindly parroting whatever self-serving narrative connections more secretive than a satanist running for the school board wish to push.

​

Proprietors of well-known thoroughbreds have less than zero incentive to disclose ANYTHING about their charge's actual infirmities. Just for example, let's theorize that such ill-fated stalwarts as Landaluce, Go for Wand, and the immortal Ruffian trained and raced with the sort of physical issues that plague almost every racehorse in America. To be clear- I AM NOT SAYING SUCH WAS THE CASE (but I do have an opinion on the blame-absolving myth of the "one bad step breakdown")..these examples are used only to make a point. So, let's further imagine that the connections of those horses had divulged in advance the mere existence of ANY unsoundness. What then, would the blowback have been on the horsemen who campaigned those high-visibility runners to the point of catastrophic injury and, of course, euthanasia?

​

Reputations ruined? Permanent damage to the sport? Almost certainly. So, again, why would any sane outfit divulge ANYTHING about a horse's true state of soundness?

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​