First congratulations to Mine That Bird, Calvin Borel, and the trainers, owners, and everyone involved with the upset win (even the kid that mucks stalls). 

Second my heart goes out to Joe Talamo in particular for the I Want Revenge scratch.  He was one of the Jockeys that participated in the Animal Planet television show of the same name.  I Want Revenge was a favorite to win the Derby; Joe was a big part of the reason.  The horse was scratched for having a slight limp, even though x-rays and ultrasound showed no problems.  It was the first scratch by a pre-race vet-check at the Derby ever.  It was the right thing to do for the horse.

A friend posted a link to The final furlong: Who hurts more, the injured horse or the person who has to kill it? Which got me thinking...

The article states about 1 in 1000 race horses die at the track, and it just seems like an awful number.  But it rolled around in my head for a while and I thought about the death-toll for other sports.  I thought about the NFL players who died fishing.  They make national news because they are NFL players, but I have actually watched a guy drown while fishing.  Folks die regularly in boating accidents.  People still take to the water in pursuit of fish and other kinds of fun.

Snowmobiling kills dozens every year in this state alone.  We don't ban it on Sundays.  That would be bad for the economy (just like no hunting on Sundays is bad for Maine's economy).

Children die playing little league and pee-wee sports.  I'm pretty sure wasp and bee stings account for a goodly percentage of deaths, but kids die.  We still send them out to play.

Now I thought about my sport of choice, hunting.  People die.  Most die from heart attacks, then falls, then accidental shooting.  Maine has about one accidental shooting death per decade.  Dogs die.  Every two or three years, one of my friends' dogs dies either hunting or training.  I'd say getting hit by a car is the #1 cause of dog death while hunting.  I've heard of some freak accidents.  Several dogs killed or seriously injured by running into trees or stumps.  I've seen several dogs stroke out in the heat, some in temperatures in the low 60's.  None have died that I witnessed, but heat stroke kills hunting dogs.

So what to do?  I don't know.  We need to make all recreation safer, while still keeping it fun.  I think what I think is even thought I don't find horse racing all that entertaining, an awful lot of folks do.  And people and animals do die incidentally to activities that are for entertainment/recreation purposes.  If there are some ways to make these sports safer for people and animals, we should try to do that.  I think the racing industry is probably safer on a "fun hour" basis (one hour of fun per person) than snowmobiling.  There are still improvements to be made in racing, but I would say it is generally improving.