Horse Racing Thread

[Babillygunn]

As a Kentuckian, and with the Derby around the corner (my wife and I are going to attend the Oakes for the first time in our marriage this year. She’s still doing her hat shopping and I’ve ordered several suits to try on and am waiting for them to come in), I have to ask:

Anybody here enjoy horse racing?

 

[InCali]

As a Kentuckian, and with the Derby around the corner (my wife and I are going to attend the Oakes for the first time in our marriage this year. She’s still doing her hat shopping and I’ve ordered several suits to try on and am waiting for them to come in), I have to ask:

Anybody here enjoy horse racing?

I like horses and the ones I've met always seemed to like me. When I lived in Santa Cruz, this woman I adored took me up to the north end of town where she had Willy the thoroughbred. I don't know if it was because I wasn't scared of him, but he walked up to me and pushed the top of his head and nose into my face and chest so I scratched his neck up to his ears. He kept his nose/forehead pressed against me and she told me "Oh...he really likes you." When we got on him, it looked like I was looking down from the top of my roof and my first thought was that if I fell, I'd probably break my Fing neck. Those animals are huge and it's hard to describe just how big and strong they are.

My step father worked at a gambling house in Gardena and used to bet on horses down in SoCal at the old Hollywood Park and, being a statistician at the time, I tried to figure out a multiple regression formula to figure out who would win. I ran some tests that failed miserably. When I told my step father about it, he just laughed at me and told me I should just talk to the trainers, most of whom he knew, because they knew whether they were going to run them or not. If you're in the Kentucky Derby or a big stakes race, I guess you're going hard, but I suppose the Hollywood Park claiming races are a different matter.

Anyway, they are beautiful animals, but Elizabeth said they can be kind of flakey at times.

 

[Babillygunn]

It is crazy that 7 horses dies at Churchill Downs this week.

 

[InCali]

It is crazy that 7 horses dies at Churchill Downs this week.

I just got back from watching Guardians of the Galaxy and I'm more than disturbed when people hurt animals or endanger them for their own purposes. I've always had a love for sports, but, sometimes, sports doesn't seem very sporting. I know it's exciting to see these tremendous athletes pushed to their limits, but there is often a high price to be paid by those who push their bodies beyond anything approaching reasonable. It's bad enough when it's people who at least have the capacity to understand what they are doing to their bodies, but when it's an animal that can't, it really bums me out.

I don't know if those horses dying is related to this, but to have that many of those beautiful animals die is heartbreaking. Having 7 deaths like that is either a statistical abnormality or something is very, very wrong. I suspect that latter.

Sometimes humanity doesn't seem very humane to me.