Horse racing will eventually break down -- and not a day too soon

Death has already come to the Kentucky Derby, so it's safe to watch on Saturday. Death can't happen so soon again. Can it?

It can't. The odds are against it, and supporters of horse racing are all about the odds. They can live with the number of horses dying -- with the freaking odds -- so we'll assume they're right. Death can't happen again this soon. So if you have even a shred of curiosity about horse racing in general or about the Derby itself, you might want to watch this weekend.

Because the sport won't be around forever.

Statistics for horse deaths at tracks don't even include Barbaro, who was euthanized at an animal hospital. (AP)

This can't go on. Horse racing, I mean. It can't, and more to the point, it won't. It'll take years, probably decades, but we're moving toward the day when the Kentucky Derby is as dead as the horse who died this week at Churchill Downs.

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I can write that word, right? Died? Horse racing people prefer other words to describe the death of a horse, like "breakdown," as if the horse is a car. There's always another car, right? Always another horse, too. But the word "breakdown" offends me, because it confuses the story instead of telling it: That a beautiful horse, one of the most spectacular creatures on this earth, had to be injected with a fatal amount of poison to put it out of its misery.

Well, the lucky ones get the injection.

The unlucky ones, like Raspberry Miss, die before they can be put out of their misery.

You probably didn't hear about that, about Raspberry Miss, because media reports tend to downplay awkward little things like "death" at the racetrack, unless the death is so enormous that it cannot be ignored. Such was the case last year when Kentucky Derby favorite Eight Belles finished second and then suffered catastrophic breaks in both her front legs and had to be killed right there on the track.

The media couldn't downplay that death, but they could gloss over what happened to Raspberry Miss, and so they did. It happened Monday, while several horses were being worked out at Churchill Downs. Raspberry Miss was standing near the finish line when a horse named Doctor Rap dumped its jockey and careened wildly around the track before crashing into the back of Raspberry Miss, shattering that horse's pelvis like a piece of china. Raspberry Miss was going to be put to sleep, which is another nice way of saying she was going to be killed, but the shock was too great. She died horribly, from the pain and the shock, before she ever got the needle.

Here is the story about that tragedy on CBSSports.com. We ran what the Daily Racing Form gave us, and what it gave us was a mystifying story that literally refused to name the dead horse. It mentioned the accident, but only as an inconvenience that threatened to disrupt the workouts of the horses that were training for Saturday's Derby. See, Raspberry Miss was only 2, not old enough for the Derby. And therefore not worth mentioning by name.

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And it wasn't just the Daily Racing Form. On the official website of the Derby, kentuckyderby.com, a writer who was there when the accident happened wrote 734 words about the day's events. "Raspberry Miss" were not among the words written. Here were some: "Without going into detail, there was an accident which resulted in some serious injuries. It happened right in front of us."

The story went on to describe how the accident truly seemed to bother various trainers who witnessed it. The story wasn't that cold. But the whole thing is odd. A horse dies at the track, and since it's not a horse anyone has ever heard of, it gets swept under the rug like a 1,000-pound dust ball.

Again.

From 2003-08, more than 3,000 horses have died at U.S. racetracks. Horse racing people will talk about the odds, and defend their sport by saying that all those deaths -- sorry, breakdowns -- translate to one or two breakdowns per 1,000 races. Like that's an acceptable number. It's not.

Think about it. More than 3,000 horses dead at racetracks. In five years. How many of them did you hear about? Two, maybe three? And those 3,000-plus deaths at the track don't include the most famous dead horse of them all, Barbaro, who died at an animal hospital eight months after winning the 2006 Kentucky Derby. He died from complications of a broken leg suffered at the Preakness, two weeks after he won the Derby.

In New York alone, 637 racehorses died at the track from 2003-08. It's possible you heard about none of them. That's a lot of dust being swept under the rug, but how much longer will we be able to ignore that stinking bulge?

Horse racing isn't immortal. There's no rule, no law, that says Thou Shalt Race Horses Forever And Ever Amen. Not at all. Sports come and go, and one of these days horse racing will be gone. Call it evolution. Call it political correctness. Call it common sense and dignity and compassion. I don't care what you call it, but understand this: Over time, civilization sifts through callous sports like cockfights and fox hunts and dwarf tossing, weeding out the sports that turn our stomach.

Horse racing is starting to turn stomachs. Don't kid yourself, horse racing fanatics. Your sport bothers more than PETA, which is a good idea gone bad, a group that has marginalized itself and minimized its message just like corner preachers scare away more followers than they attract. This column isn't a PETA-sponsored message, because PETA should do like so many racehorses have done and drop dead.

But more and more of us are becoming sickened by horse racing. The Derby is an excuse for rich snobs to put on coats and ties and silly hats and get drunk at the track. Off the track, which is where 90 percent of the betting on horse racing really occurs, people are wagering nearly $14 billion on a sport that means nothing to them but a revenue stream. Horses live, horses die, but the bets must go on.

Why? Because they've always gone on?

No. I can see it now. Horse racing won't last. It'll follow Barbaro and Eight Belles and Raspberry Miss into the ground, and when it does, I won't mourn the loss of a sport. I'll dance on its grave.