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Questions Fill Hole Left by Filly's Death
Eight Belles' demise on Derby track prompts soul-searching in racing world.
May 5, 2008 -- LOUISVILLE — Just hours before the Kentucky Derby, trainer Larry Jones got up early with his filly Eight Belles and took her to the track for a ride before the big race.
This was supposed to be a day of tempting history for Jones and Eight Belles.
They were taking on 19 colts and trying to make Eight Belles the fourth filly, and the first since Winning Colors in 1988, to win the "Run for the Roses."
This was to be a day of celebration for owner Rick Porter and his entourage no matter where she finished. She was the first filly to enter the Derby since 1999.
Now there will be a necropsy and then cremation.
It was a day that held such promise.
And a day on which the racing industry should have been celebrating a legitimate Triple Crown contender in Big Brown.
Not an afternoon to explain how, for the second time in two years, tragedy befell their sport.
The day was not supposed to end in the death of another great racehorse.
Perhaps if the wounds of losing Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro were not so fresh there would not be this feeling of "Here we go again." Perhaps the shock would not have been so severe.
Eerily, Barbaro's trainer, Michael Matz, saw another one of his horses, Chelokee, injured Friday at Churchill Downs with the same injury as Barbaro, a broken lower leg.
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