I spent some time yesterday trying to come up with some response to agentsteel53's assertion that horse racing is "cruel and senseless", but nothing persuasive came to mind.  Probably because I'm no fan of the sport.  The kind of racing I like involves four wheels and an engine that burns methanol or dead dinosaur flesh.  All I could think of is that humans have been racing horses almost since they domesticated the beasts, and at least in Western cultures, with horses bred and trained specifically for racing, what you're seeing are the superstar athletes of the equine world.  If one doesn't have a problem with watching humans sprint around a track, then I'm not sure why one would object to horses doing the same.

That doesn't make the news that Eight Belles was euthanized following her race in the Kentucky Derby today any easier to swallow, of course.  Eight Belles, the only filly in the race, finished second behind favorite Big Brown, then collapsed with both of her front ankles broken.  She ran "the race of her life", as her trainer put it.  Ain't that a shitter?  You finish in the money and get turned into glue.  And you have to wonder if it was a wise idea to run Eight Belles against the boys, when there's a race held the day before (Kentucky Oaks) just for the fillies.  I don't know enough about the sport to say for sure.  All I know is, we saw a horse literally run herself to death.

I still can't say if horse racing is a brutal, inhumane sport, but I sure don't see the point of it, either.