Twelve horses have died at Louisville, Kentucky's Churchill Downs since April 12, 2023. As of this writing, 16 have died at Belmont Park — where the Belmont Stakes, the third and final jewel of the Triple Crown, is set to take place on Saturday, June 10. And every time another beautiful horse with terrible odds dies brutally in the dirt, bit-choked and lungs bleeding out, Americans ask "Why?"
At peak racing speed, they can thunder through the turns of Churchill Downs at 38 miles per hour. The sheer force of their thousand-pound bodies pummels the dirt track's hazardous slings — but only after first funneling through the narrow cabling of their spindly forelimb ligaments. Unrelenting propulsion ripping through channels of deep flexor tendons and shock-absorbing fetlock ankles, every ounce of a thoroughbred racehorse's weight is condensed into aluminum-shod hooves, bred so thin and small they average just four inches across.
