The sport is developing a way to make it safer for half of those involved. Care to guess which half?

Several safety vest companies in Europe and Asia have cropped up out of the motorcycle field to offer riders a two-point inflatable vest meant to provide a car airbag-like cushion if a rider is thrown from a horse. The design of this ejector seat pack is fairly clever. First the pack expands like a flotation vest in the front around the ribcage and down the spinal column in the back (from next to sciatica) A ripcord connecting to a CO2 canister in the evest on one end is connected to the rider’s saddle on the other. If the rider moved more than a few inches off the saddle, the vest expands within 1/4 of a second to provide a cushion from the ground below and perhaps the horse that is moments away from crashing down on top of you.

From the New York Times:

“It’s certainly the biggest step forward in the safety of our sport, ever,” said Oliver Townend, a British rider who was wearing a vest in April when his horse tumbled on top of him at the Kentucky Three-Day Event in Lexington. Townend broke his sternum, four ribs, his collarbone and the tips of his shoulder bones — but he says he still believes in the vest.

“I walked out of hospital the next day, where otherwise I would be in a box or in America for a month,” Townend said in a recent phone interview.

Quick question, Townsend wasn’t putting a month in America on par with death right there, was he? I’m pretty sure he wasn’t, but he kinda also sounded like he was.

The $370-700 vest has seemingly taken the equestrian world by storm, having been worn by the top 40 riders in the world. But it doesn’t tackle the cause of the spills in the first place – the horses. Air vests are sweet, but call me when they invent spookless horses.

Read the full NYT column here.

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Photo courtesy of Fred R. Conrad via the New York Times

See, no one tells horse trainer Darryl Delahoussaye anything.

From Thoroughbred Times:

Pennsylvania trainer Darrel Delahoussaye was arrested on Wednesday and charged with attempting to fix races at Penn National Race Course, based on evidence and testimony that he administered milkshakes and snake venom to horses before they raced.

State police charged Delahoussaye … with two felony counts of theft by deception and one misdemeanor count each of rigging a publicly exhibited contest, administering drugs to race horses, and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.

Frankly, the sterilized charges of what Delahoussaye will most likely go to jail for don’t do justice to the batty lowliness of his alleged crimes. Luckily, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s desterilizing stuff.

Those two counts of theft by deception? A fellow trainer gave Delahoussaye three injured horses worth $2,000 apiece under the belief that he would send those horses to an out-of-state retirement facility. Instead, he sold the horses for a total of $1,350 to settle a debt. Not sure why he’s charged with only two counts of theft by deception and not three, but one of the injured horses, Storm Rising, recovered and raced at Suffolk Downs three times this spring, most recently finishing second in a $4,000 claiming race on June 7.

Then there’s the misdemeanor count of rigging a publicly exhibited contest.

Controversial owner Michael Gill fired Delahoussaye on January 24, a day after one of Gill’s horses, Laughing Moon, broke down and was euthanized after a third-place finish in an allowance race at Penn National. Laughing Moon was the second Gill-owned horse to break down there in three days, and a horse trained by Delahoussaye … broke down on January 13 and initiated a chain reaction spill.

Most would agree that if Delahoussaye injected one horse with a milkshake full of baking soda, sugar, electrolyte powder, Red Bull, DMSO (dimethylsulfoxide – an anti-inflammatory) and anything else found in the garbage, he’s almost certainly injected other horses with such a concoction. But it ain’t what you know, it’s what you can prove and so he’s getting charged for Laughing Moon.

Before Delahoussaye was fired, milkshakes were allowed to be injected in horses, just not within 24 hours of a race. Since July 15, milkshakes are no longer allowed at any time.

The administering drugs to horses (if you count snake venom as a drug, which Arizona bikers and meth addicts do) charge should be obvious. And finally, there’s the tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.

In October, three months before the Laughing Moon incident, investigators discovered items used to administer a milkshake to  another Gill-owned horse, Lion’s Pride. Two months after that (a month before the Laughing Moon incident) Lion’s Pride threw his jockey, came up lame and has not raced since. This was when Delahoussaye started being watched more carefully. So carefully, in fact, he started covering his tracks.

[Stable groom James] Muzzy said he turned several bottles of … DMSO … over to a state trooper after Delahoussaye asked Muzzy to hide several medications in fear that investigators for the state racing commission would search the stable.

Delahoussaye isn’t the only one to blame here. He’s the first in line, sure. But what about the Pennsylvania State Racing Commission and the Penn National Race Course? It’s impossible to believe their hands were tied while three horses from the same owner and same trainer came up lame in the span of five weeks – especially when one considers that the Penn National jockeys collectively threatened to boycott any races holding a Gill-owned starter.

Even the best jockey’s live race-to-race. Horse-to-horse. Owner-to-owner. It’s one of the most cut-throat businesses in sports. The idea that none of the jockeys would participate in a race involving Gill, the nation’s leader in wins and earnings last year before being barred from Penn National earlier this, speaks volumes about how destructive this situation was.

So why were the jockeys able to take action in 2009, but Delahoussaye wasn’t fired until early 2010? Perhaps we’ll find out later this month – a preliminary hearing is scheduled for August 16.

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Eight Belles photo courtesy of Flickr

Zenyatta (left) and Rachel Alexandra (center)

It’s probable that most sports fans will complete their 2009 without having paid attention to the best rivalry of the season. It’s over, although it’s not settled. It was intense, but neither competitor faced one another. Many of the events were designed for males yet dominated by two girls.

I’m referring to Horse of the Year candidates, Zenyatta and Rachel Alexandra.

From Z to A: A Tale of the Tape (Click to enlarge)

Go ahead and scoff at this assertion (I already hear some of you scoffing. Honestly, it happened faster than I thought it was going to), but all season long, these two fillies have been absolutely astounding by the standards of the sport in which they compete. Detractors of horse racing really won’t be swayed no matter what the argument, but for those of you who believe in the sport’s merit, it’s simply undeniable how legendary these two horses have been.

What makes this rivalry special is the dominance both horses shared while going about such dominance quite differently. Zenyatta, the pleasant plodder who was rarely flashy, but won by virtue of calculation. Alexandra who avoided stress and strain by simply running ahead of it. These two girls went a combined 22-0 this year, most races of which were against a stable full of boys and both with a steady shot at becoming the first female to win Horse of the Year honors since Azeri seven years ago.

From the AP:

It’s a debate sure to simmer until January, when the Eclipse Awards—the Oscars of horse racing—are presented in Beverly Hills. Members of the National Turf Writers Association, the Daily Racing Form and racing secretaries at the major tracks decide the year’s champion horses.

Even before Zenyatta’s come-from-behind win Saturday, Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert suggested the horses should share the top honor.

“If they don’t reward her with Horse of the Year, it would be a travesty, or at least co-Horses of the Year,” said Baffert, who trained sixth-place Classic finisher Richard’s Kid. “It was the only time in horse racing that I didn’t mind getting beat in a big race.”

Chip Woolley Jr., trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird, said before the Classic that Rachel Alexandra had already clinched Horse of the Year.

“The one thing everybody keeps forgetting, she beat the fillies with authority,” he said of Rachel Alexandra. “She didn’t win by a neck or a length or two lengths. She beat ‘em by 20 and in a big gallop. When you look at that and you put everything together, I think she’s a very deserving champion.”

Belmont Stakes winner Summer Bird was beaten by Rachel Alexandra in the Haskell Invitational and by Zenyatta in the Classic. His trainer, Tim Ice, was critical of Rachel’s absence Saturday at Santa Anita.

“Each sport has their championship game,” he said. “If you don’t compete in the championship game, then you shouldn’t be a champion. This is the highlight of the year as far as all the great horses coming together. This should name Horse of the Year.

“I wish they would have brought her (Rachel) here so we could have proved to the racing world what Zenyatta’s really about,” said Zenyatta’s jockey, Mike Smith. “I’m not going to go out and say I’m going to beat her, but I would have given anything to run against her.”

Both horses had their fickle moments this season. Zenyatta was in Kentucky on Derby weekend but scratched because of a muddy track. Alexandra was begged to compete in the Breeders’ Cup. Organizers even offered an extra $1 million to the purse if she showed, but her owners didn’t like the synthetic track.

Oh, what could have been. Oh, but what was anyway.

Horse racing just isn’t very popular in America, at least not compared to many other professional sports. Because of that, this rivalry-from-afar will largely go unnoticed. And with Zenyatta set to retire following her stunning Breeders’ Cup race finale, there will be no chance for a second act between these two.

But my god, it was fun while it lasted.

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Top photo collage courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

At Belmont Park’s fifth race on Saturday, a filly named Phone Jazz got tired of dancing for the Man so she bucked off her jockey and shimmied out of the starting gate free as the wind blows. The 8-1 pre-race long shot was never technically disqualified, but was considered a last place also-ran unable to complete the race under racing’s rules.

Some media outlets have offered up this not-as-rare-as-you’d-think incident as proof that jockeys only slow the horses down (of course a horse with 120 fewer pounds on her back ran faster). Others claim that it’s far more likely for de-jockeyed horses to bump into other horses, run off the track or overrun and injure itself after being spooked than to win and that Phone Jazz’s victory is newsworthy.

There’s no way Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird would have found the necessary holes on his own without jockey Calvin Borel, which is an example of why jockeys are necessary in the sport. As far as Jazz Phone’s romp? The average 3-year-old filly weighs 1,400 lbs. Losing less than 8 percent of her body weight would be the same as a 140-lbs. sprinter sloughing off 12 lbs. of dead weight. So yeah, it seems easier to run faster without the jockey.

Either way, Phone Jazz must have been disappointed coming around the final turn only to find the same flustered jockey waiting there despite having ditched him six furlongs ago.

The feelings of the ejected jockey, Jean-Luc Samyn, were the only thing injured from the throw.

Check out the VIDEO

Rachel Alexandra was so far ahead in the Kentucky Oaks finale that by the time I squared my camera and snapped a picture, she was gone and all that was left were the losers she dusted. (Pictured: The dusted losers)

It should have been clear that something special was going to happen during the 135th Kentucky Derby weekend the minute Scott Padgett, a Kentucky University alum and member of the NBA from 1999-2007, stepped in front of me and shot me a goofy smile (of course it was awkward. Have you seen Padgett? No other smile had a chance of flyin’ off that mug). I should have known it, but I didn’t.

Derby weekend must be seen to be believed. Churchill Downs in the first week of May is like a Jay Gatsby party in which every woman in attendance is under the impression she’s Daisy Buchanan. There are no orchestras playing jazz (unless you count Taylor Swift, in which case it’s just as Fitzgerald imagined it) and the high-society types are more imagined than imaginary.

What you need to remember is that Derby weekend is only about the 23 horse races to everyone outside of Kentucky. Once inside Louisville, it’s about hats and mint juleps. Seeing horses race plays like the Art Garfunkel to the Churchill Downs’ boozing and schmoozing Paul Simon. As someone whose fingers were inked with the racing forms 20 minutes after arrival, I was unaware how fleeting the elite’s interest in horse racing was. Over the nine hours I watched fillies run in Friday’s Kentucky Oaks races, this passivity was something that revealed itself to me as harshly as an desperate flasher. It took longer to understand why women spend a day moving wide hat brims out of their eyes than it did to fully appreciate the nuances of betting on horses.

Here are the basics of race day: (my apologies to races aficionados. Go to the bathroom, make a sandwich and when you come back, I‘ll be done with this part…providing you skip ahead to the next paragraph) There are 12 female races during the Oaks and 11 races during the Derby. There are anywhere between eight to 13 horses in each race accept for each day’s main event, in which there are a maximum of 20. Unlike the U.K., America sets its lines based upon the betting patterns of the masses. So if June Day is a 3-1 favorite on Wednesday, but no one bets on her by race time Friday, the odds that she’ll win don’t remain 3-1, they decrease significantly. American odds, the line on Wednesday is just a starting point, but the amount of bets that each horse gets right up until the start of each race, greatly determine the odds.  Cool, huh? Before each race, you can bet early or you can bet late. Technically you can bet whenever you want, but unless you want to be reading about horse betting for another six hours, let’s go with the simplest explanation. If you bet on Senor Fuego 40 minutes before she’s set to race, you’ll be basing your wager on professional line-setters and the analysis inside and your gut (if there’s two things I learned not to trust on Derby weekend, it’s my gut and men dressed in pink). The early odds are based on the horse’s, trainer’s and jockey’s history and has nothing to do with the people’s wagers. Then again, if you bet on Senor Fuego at 8-1 odds 40 minutes before the race, by the time the bets windows close, the masses could have made her a 5-2 favorite or a 30-1 underdog and you’ll be trapped in your bet. Then again, if you wait until after the odds have been muddied with the gut-feeling wagers of the over-tanned wannabe West Egg socialites. The choice is up to you.

Back from the bathroom, I see. You didn’t happen to bring me a mint julep, did you? Something about equines makes me hanker for drinks that taste like mouthwash and whiskey.

When you’re in the wager lines waiting to throw your money away forever, you’ll see all sorts of race fans. Churchill Downs is an old boys club to be sure. Men with money bring their wives who are living off of it to an event that they dare not miss but aren’t all that interested in. Twentysomethings and the elderly alike arrive in costume. The ridiculousness lies not in the antiquated get-ups, but in the un-ironic sincerity with which people wore these goony costumes. Tradition is fine and I’m all for it, but why this one? At the races, showing up in low-cut prom dresses with large hats or suits that make its wearers look like plantation owners is not only acceptable, it’s expected. But taken out of context, if any of the people at the races lost their way and wound up in another state in their getup, they would immediately be checked into the nearest looney bin. Perhaps it’s best not to get into that and just appreciate a skinny woman in a bright canary dress spilling her mimosa on her shoes because she’s too preoccupied fiddling with the feathers on her gigantic top hat that she’s clearly not comfortable wearing. The Kentucky Derby: where classy race enthusiasts happen.  Sorry, I’m so bitter. Mint juleps do that to me. Seriously, those things are awful.

On Friday, I bet the winning horse 3-of-7 times, came out of the day down $80 (I did win a hot dog from my girlfriend, which emotionally counted as about $25) and got to see the Oaks favorite Rachel Alexandra beat the field by 20 1/4-lengths, an Oaks record. Rachel Alexandra was so fast, most people believe she could have won the Derby had she been entered into it. (Editor’s note: Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode Rachel Alexandra to victory on Friday, also rode the 50-1 Mine That Bird to a shocking Derby victory one day later. Two days after that the cheapskates that owned Rachel Alexandra sold her to a wealthier stable who plan to enter her in the Preakness Stakes later this month. Borel chose the female horse to ride in the Preakness instead of the Derby Winner. Rachel Alexandra is only the third filly to run in the Preakness and Borel is only the third jockey to switch off the Derby winner before the Preakness).

The win was breathtaking and brilliant, even for a novice like myself. Imagine your first basketball experience being witness to a LeBron James triple-double? What if all you knew of baseball was a Randy Johnson no-hitter? I don’t doubt that Rachel Alexandra’s ass-whuppin’ was on the same level. Either way, it bore a new race fan in me.

Afterwards, I heard Adrian Brody was at the race, along with various brats from MTV shows. When did I hear this? Less than 60 seconds after Rachel Alexandra’s run. The info was purloined from a text message on a young woman’s iPhone. As the information spread around the section of the grandstands, the conversation ceased being about that magnificent filly and had totally shifted to Kim Kardashian’s Barnstable party and where in the grandstands Michael Jordan might have been. Imagine seeing that LeBron James triple-double and then commenting on how good the stadium’s cotton candy is. Or discussing traffic whle Randy Johnsons’ teammates are still dog-piling on top of him in celebration. Nothing else mattered because in Louisville, it’s about the spectators, not what they’re are spectating.

And the only thing more shameful than the fans’ attention to the event was how hard I tried to evesdrop the last conversation long enough to find out where Jordan was hiding.

You hafta admit, it would have been awesome to rub elbows with Mike.

City On Line, a 4-year-old colt running at Belmont Park last week, broke off line from his lead pony before the fifth race on May 20 and went streaking down the tunnel to an enclosure field.

If this were a Disney film, there would have been a cricket or hummingbird tangled in his mane telling City to be free. And then City would have run right out of Belmont to go on some wacky musical adventures.

But this ain’t Disney and instead of running free, the chestnut colt was blinded by the light coming out of the tunnel and smacked into a bronze statue of Secretariat, making a loud enough sound for the entire grandstands to hear.

The jockey, Jose Lezcano, was thrown off City (before it ran toward the paddock) and the statue base of the ’73 Triple Crown winner was broken, but the real damage happened to City On Line’s irreparably fractured femur.

The horse enthusiasts in the audience know that such an injury means an early death. PETA knows that such an injury gives them more fodder with which to alienate itself from the masses. This case was no different. It takes four healthy legs to hold up a horse’s massive upper body. Horses aren’t euthanized because they can’t race (in theory), they’re euthanized because of the excruciating pain such an injury causes these animals.

City On Line likely would have had laminitis if not put down quickly, a disease that to humans would be similar to if we walked only on our fingernails and toenails, had them ripped out and still had to put all your weight on them every day.

As easy as it might be to decry the quick killing of racehorses, perhaps decriers should investigate the as yet unknown reasons for the New York colt’s sudden freakout. If that doesn’t do it for you, I’ve already sent in a petition to have a City On Line statue memoriam made and set sideways at the base of the Secretariat monument as an eternal relic of the incident.

That ought to get ‘em.

Check out the AP.

Rachel Alexandra isn’t the best filly, she’s the best racehorse. And perhaps, she’s the most important step in gender equality since…well, since ever. This horse is special for more than her performance at Pimlico. She’s proof that, at least sometimes, competition doesn’t always break down gender lines.

NASCAR and golf are two sports that have flirted with breaking the gender barrier the most, though none of the females have ever achieved as much as their hype suggests (see: Wie, Michelle), but those sports are far closer to it than say, boxing.

But what about fighting? The idea of pitting a woman against a man immediately seems offensive and cruel. Men are never supposed to hit women. They’re the fairer sex, delicate flowers. And for any self-respecting man, winning a test of strength and endurance is expected and if didn’t happen, it was the man’s shame, not the woman’s triumph.

But what if there were ways to change that? Currently, the mixed martial arts world has two bankable names without contracts. They’re so good that their only competition is each other.  This is bankable once or twice, but not every month.

Both Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos and Gina Carano have established themselves as the Rachel Alexandra’s of their sport, but whereas Rachel has the ability to test her skills against the best, the same would be unthinkable in MMA.

There’s nothing that can be done about our social queasiness about watching a woman get hit by a man. Most of us are programmed to feel any such fight is unfair and barbaric. But what if we started quantifying mixed-gender fights differently than regular fights? Regular fights categorize fighters by their weight, not their power or agility.

Clearly a 210-pound heavyweight would never fight a 135-pound woman. Even a 135-pound man carries an advantage over a 135-pound woman, because the pounds are packed differently between the two body types. Force isn’t simply a matter of muscle, but of how those muscles are used.

So what if the sport looked at how much power each fighter exerts? Look at all the tests Ivan Drago went through. You don’t think some of those tests could be adapted to figure out how many pounds of force Carano’s muay-tai kicks accumulates? UPDATE: Not only is it possible, it’s happened (sorta). We can deduce that Carano vs. Drago would not be a fair fight. Carano can strike with anywhere between 450-800 lbs. of force. Drago seems to be able to punch in the neighborhood of 1,850 lbs…if he were real.

Isn’t it possible to have genuine stars-in-waiting like Santos and Carano fight better competition without turning it into a circus? If Santos can kick with the force of 350 lbs. and punch with the force of 170 lbs., isn’t it possible to match her up with a man exhibiting the same numbers? Yeah, yeah. Mixed martial arts is not just kicks and jabs, but arm-bars and ground ‘n’ pound and sleeper locks and so-on, but isn’t that all quantifiable? And if it is, can’t these organizations use those quantifications to showcase their talent?

Scrapping bottoms of various barrels ain’t working so far and without the ability to parade their commodities in front of fans (I didn’t mean that the way it might have sounded), they have only a faint gasp of hope for other female fighters to develop into real challengers.

Right now a filly is the fastest race horse in the world and it only happened because she was given a chance she was close to not having. Is it unthinkable to give these same chances to human females?