AMERICA AT LARGEClaims of cruelty to a horse that died in the Kentucky Derby are preposterous, writes George Kimball

PEOPLE WHO were standing in the Churchill Downs infield on Saturday afternoon reported that an audible groan swept the crowd of 150,000 a few seconds after Big Brown romped home to win the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby.

As she eased into a canter after her second-place finish, Eight Belles, the lone filly in the race, had suddenly pitched forward as both forelegs collapsed beneath her. Jockey Gabriel Santos went flying straight over the horse's head, and nearly landed face-first on the track before saving himself with an acrobatic somersault.

To the millions of us watching on television, of course, none of this was immediately apparent. The NBC cameras were focused on Big Brown and the jubilation his owners and trainers. I was otherwise engaged in mental gymnastics, trying to calculte the pay-off on my $5 Big Brown-Eight Belles exacta.

Several minutes elapsed before the TV people even mentioned that Eight Belles had apparently been injured after the race, and by the time the cameras actually showed a picture of the ailing filly lying on the track, she was already surrounded by two horse ambulances.

"This isn't good," I told my wife, explaining that the extra ambulance had been dispatched to shield the crowd from a view of what was going to happen next. The other would be utilised to haul the carcass away.

Most casual American sports fans typically watch thoroughbred racing exactly three times a year. Millions of television sets were tuned to the events in Louisville, but once the classics - the Derby, followed by the Preakness and Belmont Stakes - have run their course, thoughts of the ponies are packed away and not revived until the first Saturday in May of the following year.

And for the second time in less than two years they had witnessed a fatality. In May of 2006, the Kentucky Derby champion Barbaro had stumbled coming out of the gate and fractured three bones in his right hind leg. A generation ago, Barbaro would, like Eight Belles, have been immediately euthanised. Given the wonders of microsurgery in modern veterinary medicine he was fitted with a cast and managed to live for another nine months, but in the end could not be saved. There was no chance of saving Eight Belles. She had fractured the ankles in both forelegs, and was immediately put down. In the intervening days, there have been renewed calls for the abolition of the sport, and in short order the minions of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were predictably picketing the Lexington headquarters of Kentucky's racing board with inspired signs like the one reading "Stop Racing Horses to the Grave."

PETA went one step further in this latest episode. Claiming that Santos "was whipping (Eight Belles) to the bitter end", the organisation accused the 20-year-old jockey of abuse, and demanded his suspension. As a corollary, PETA, claiming the filly was "doubtlessly injured before the finish", asked the Churchill Downs people to hold the $400,000 runner-up's purse pending an investigation.

Both claims are equally preposterous. Photographs of Eight Belles crossing the finish line reveal no indications of a horse in distress, and she galloped on for a good quarter mile further, which would have been impossible on two broken ankles. (Santos' description of the catastrophe, delivered to the first outrider to reach him, was that it had been "Momento y rapido" - sudden and quick.)

The young Panamanian jockey does not speak English, but Eight Belles' trainer Larry Jones was quick to defend him.

"No way did he abuse this horse," said Jones, who noted that Eight Belles had evinced a past proclivity for drifting toward the rail.

Five lengths adrift of Big Brown with no chance of catching him and securely in control of second place, Santos had lightly used a left-handed switch down the home stretch only to keep Eight Belles from crashing into the rail. Replays similarly show no indication that Santos pulled the horse up precipitately. When she broke down, he immediately, albeit somewhat involuntarily, dismounted.

The irony is that Eight Belles very nearly didn't run in the Derby at all.

Jones had entered her in both the Run for the Roses and the preceding day's Kentucky Oaks, a three-year-old filly Classic she would likely have won with ease. Only after Wednesday's post position draw did the trainer declare for the Derby.

She was only the 40th distaff three-year-old in 134 years to even attempt the feat. Only three fillies have ever won the Derby, none in the past 20 years. Jones acknowledged "it takes a special horse to do it", but in Eight Belles he thought he might have that horse.

Eight Belles had followed an undistinguished two-year-old season by winning four straight races this year, including two at Arkansas' Oaklawn Park which she won by a combined margin of more than 30 lengths.

The whinging of PETA has been joined by some newspaper people (a New York Times column on Monday described racing as a "brutal" sport) who ought to know better than to beat a dead horse.

A more thoughtful examination of the contemporary thoroughbred scene might suggest a rational explanation that has nothing to do with horse-whipping.

There is at least the suggestion that genetic factors may obtain in the fragility of today's racehorses.

Simply put, owners who once bred horses to race them now breed them to sell them, ensuring that infirmities are even more likely to be passed down from generation to generation.

That today's crop of thoroughbreds are statistically more likely to break down than their ancestors is beyond dispute, but that it's happened twice in 24 months under the glare of the television cameras represents such a fractional improbability that you'd just have to put it down to bad luck.