The 134^th running of the Kentucky Derby proved to be one of the most exciting ever, as 19 of the 20 horses in the field crumpled to the track with various limb injuries and were euthanized, even while Big Brown – courageously nursing a fracture of the front-left hoof, a partially dislocated face and a tail that spontaneously combusted – painfully limped to the finish line while scream-naying.

            “Critics will try to turn this into a negative day for horse racing,” said Kent Desormeaux, who rode Big Brown to victory. “But I don’t see it that way. I see it as an example of the sport’s vitality. With the deafening sound of all those horse bones cracking, we could have packed it in, especially when Big Brown’s ankle exploded and his tail caught on fire. But even when he fell to the track, I dismounted, grabbed his mane and pulled his body across the finish line. And I could tell that he wanted to get there, too, because he passed out from the pain and stopped fighting me.”

            With just two weeks until the second leg of the Triple Crown at the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Big Brown is a heavy favorite to win.

            “All of his top contenders are dead,” said the horse’s trainer, Rick Dutrow, Jr. “Big Brown can’t really live very long with that leg fracture, of course, but we’re planning to keep him alive and strap him to a scooter at Preakness and at the Belmont Stakes and push him around the track. That’s what he would want. He just loves to race. And with all the weight he’ll lose while dying, he should be pretty easy to push.”

            Desormeaux supports the plan to keep racing Big Brown.

            “Oh, yeah. He loves to run,” said Desormeaux. “He didn’t always love to run, but then I started whipping him really hard. Now, whenever he sees me coming, he takes off running as fast as can be.”

            As the call from animal lovers grows to ban horse racing as an increasing number of horses die each year, Dutrow says the push is misguided.

            “Hey, I’m a horse lover, too,” said Dutrow. “And my fellow horse lovers need to realize that an immobile horse is much easier to hug than a horse that is healthy and up and running around. I think it’s a lot more compassionate to run horses to their death so they can get to heaven. If we can make a buck or two off of that while getting to hug them at the same time, what’s the harm there?”