I Dread Sports Reporters Today, If Rhoden's On It

Does that mean we need a Tomb of the Unknown Horse?

 

It could be built in the shape of a bar of soap.

 

Finally, a sense of humor surfaces.

 

A number I heard mentioned this morning (I think it was on Mike and Mike) is that an average of two horses a day have to be put down due to racing injuries . . . the rate is 1.6 per 1,000 starts.

If that number is accurate, then Rhoden had the right idea. Again, though, he needed to beef up the column with facts instead of the trite "even one death is too many."

 

I believe Bob Ley, on the early Sports Center yesterday, said that 700 racehorses are killed in a year due to injury.

 

Somebody just told me that Rhoden was on NPR with Andy Beyer, spouting more of his song.

God, the wronger he is, the more tenaciously he abuses us all.

 

To be fair, I thought Rhoden got the better of Beyer in their head-to-head.

 

I don't agree with everything Andy says, but he'll know more about racing after being dead six years than Rhoden will ever know.

 

I don't disagree with what you're saying, but that doesn't preclude Rhoden for being able to score some points on the issue of whether te sport is cruel/inhumane. Though Rhoden went overboard in comparing the thoroughbreds issue to greyhounds repeatedly, he had a valid point somewhat along the lines that very few horses get treated as well as Triple Crown-caliber animals.

And, there is the undeniable point that the horses do not race voluntarily. It might be in their DNA to gallop briskly on a farm from time to time, but not to race at maximum speed for two minutes at a stretch while at the business end of a jockey's crop and with a 120-pound load onboard.