If Packers Were Ponies

Yesterday I pointed out that that several NFL players would have to die each year during games for professional football to be as deadly as Thoroughbred horse racing is for the horses that race.

I underestimated.

Michael asked our local experts – the Green Bay Packers – if they could give us the actual data we needed to turn my estimate into a more accurate comparison. Since they are nicest team in the USA, (as well as the best – Go Pack!) they dug out the exact data that we needed.

Have I mentioned how nice the Packers are?

So – how deadly is professional football compared to Thoroughbred horse racing?

If the National Football League had the same fatality rate for their players during the regular season as racehorses have during races, more than 50 NFL football players would die each year from injuries sustained during games.

More than fifty deaths?

Football would get banned.

The individual Michael spoke to at the Packers office, btw, said that the only game-related player fatality in the NFL that he could personally remember occurred back in 2001, and it didn’t actually occur during a game: a Vikings team member died of heat stroke during a practice.

It’s time for the Thoroughbred racing industry to clean up its act. Provide cash incentives for longevity and soundness. Require synthetic surfaced tracks – which have already cut the fatality rate in half where they’ve been installed. And stop rewarding the genetics of greed.

The Genetics of Greed

Saturday’s ugly death at the Kentucky Derby of the Thoroughbred filly Eight Belles didn’t surprise me.

Every horse that ran in the Derby last Saturday descends from Native Dancer, a gray Thoroughbred stallion who racked up an impressive set of wins in his day (he died in 1967). His offspring were also fast. As ’speed’ isn’t necessarily a trait that is passed along from a stallion to his offspring, this made Native Dance an incredibly popular breeding stallion, so much so that seventy-five percent of all American-bred Thoroughbreds currently racing are descended from Native Dancer.

Unfortunately, Native Dancer didn’t just pass along speed. He passed along leg problems, and this isn’t a secret in the TB racing industry. Even a place as far removed from a breeding farm as one can imagine – the Wall Street Journal – ran an article about it last week, saying that Native Dancer’s line “has a tragic flaw. Thanks in part to heavily muscled legs and a violent, herky-jerky running style, Native Dancer and his descendants have had trouble with their feet.”

The article went on to say,

“How one stallion gained so much influence over the sport is a story about market forces, genetics and in some cases greed. His bloodline’s greatest asset is that it consistently produces precocious, speedy thoroughbreds that dominate the Derby and other Triple Crown events — giving owners a safer return on their investments. But that success has led breeders to mate Native Dancer’s progeny so often that the thoroughbred gene pool has shrunk.”

Big mistake.

As someone who owned, trained and rode horses for over 30 years, I’ve seen my share of what greed for the fastest racer, the most athletic jumper, the highest scoring dressage mount, the best eventer, and even the ‘most desired color’ can do. For the Thoroughbred racing industry, short-sighted gains have sown the seeds for disaster.

How often does a Thoroughbred racehorse die?

When a horse races, it’s called a ’start.’ If twenty horses run in a race, as they did in the Kentucky Derby, it counts as twenty starts. For the last two years – the only years that have reliable data for the Thoroughbred racing industry, in terms of numbers of horses’ deaths on the track – two Thoroughbreds die from injuries they sustain during a race on a ‘natural surface’ track like that at Churchill Downs for every 1000 starts. That statistic doesn’t include, by the way, the horses that die from inuries sustained during training – it only includes the deaths of horses that actually make it to the starting gate.

Two dead horses per thousand starts. That statistic makes my head want to explode.

To put this in perspective: it’s the equivalent of several NFL players dying during regular season games every single season.

Horse racing inherently has risks. But I don’t personally feel that deaths like those of Eight Belles are from the ‘risks of racing.’ From where I’m sitting, those deaths seem like the end result of an industry that has turned the Thoroughbred racehorse into a disposable living commodity bred to win as much cash as quickly as possible before breaking down.

Where’s the sport in that?

The Battle of the Nests

Every spring we have a little battle that rages back and forth between us and various and sundry mourning doves and robins who feel compelled to build their nests on top of our bedroom’s air conditioner.

They build… we broom the nests down… they build… we destroy … all in a rather maddening cycle for all involved.

This year the cycle has changed with the entry of a third player.

The robins built their nest. We knocked it down. They rebuilt. Then… they disappeared.

Odd, that. Curious, even, as robins are most determined birds when they’ve picked out a nesting site.

The next day a mourning dove moved in. She built her nest. We knocked it down. She built another nest. We knocked it down. She built again…

And then I discovered why the robins had gone.

A hawk, one that I’ve seen many times over the winter, had marked the nesting site. On Saturday afternoon, as I watched, he swooped down and caught the mourning dove as she flew from her newly rebuilt nest to go to our feeder, killing her instantly.

I did feel bad for the mourning dove. At the same time, however, I admit feeling quite a bit of gratitude towards the hawk for rather conclusively cutting short our annual battle of the nests!

From the size of the hawk, the shape of its tail and its head coloration, I’m leaning towards believing this is a male Cooper’s Hawk, but I’m not sure – it might be a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Opinions as to which it is (and why!) are welcome!