The Mercury News

From the triple crown races of the Kentucky Derby, from Preakness and Belmont Stakes to Breeders' Cup and beyond, it is impossible to think about horse racing without also summoning the shadows of all beautiful thoroughbreds that have died on the route.

The CNN reporter Katie Bo Lillis usually covers the intelligence group and the national security problems, but when she noticed news about an alarming flood from race horse case on routes across the country in 2023, she knew that she had to enter into the conversation.

“It was less” I have to “deal with” and more about an “Oh my god! There is so much that the people two days before the 151st Kentucky Derby are missing from their house in the DC region.” This story has more than in most articles that I have read from very talented and well-intentioned journalists. But that's just a hard, esoteric world. “

Lillis knows this world first -hand after he grew up as part of the horse race. At 19, she got a job in which she trained racing horses in a stable in rural Virginia, and according to her own report, she never lost the feeling of awe for the thoroughbred or the people who dedicate her career.

“I knew this world. I loved this world. And I thought:” I can sit in this Venn diagram and I can be the translator, “said Lillis.” I thought: 'I am probably the only reporter who has both sentences of specialist knowledge … to tell this story professionally and convincingly. “

That is why she used all of her research and reporting skills as a journalist with her knowledge of horses and races to be seen to produce her first book “Death of a Racehorse: an American story” what is undoubtedly long as one of the clear eyes, moving, disturbing and thorough will for royal sports.

Just in time for the course of the Triple Crown, the most coveted and famous series from races in May to June, published on May 6th by Simon & Schuster, published by The Triple Crown. The book is neither the justification of racing practices that some fans want, nor the condemnation of the sport that some provider rights lawyers require. What is on the pages is much more complex and nuanced.

“I had spent years in this world and it was really a matter of course for everyone else, like many people in racing, that it made a kind of intuitive sense – but it is a completely exciting world if they are not permeated every day,” she said. But as a journalist “I had a bit of a leg in the sense that I knew what questions I asked from a mainstream audience.”

The driving story of the book begins with the shocking death of the Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit in Santa Anita Park. It then brings the most successful, yet most controversial coach in the history of sport, Bob Baffert, into the picture, which only returned to the Kentucky derby after a three-year suspension this year to use a medication spirit that was forbidden for the use of race day.

From there, the story reads with the pace of a crime drama in which the Byzantine complexity of the race world is built up from breeding practices to the optimized schedules in order to also earn money at the expense of the health of horses. Lillis makes great efforts to explain the confusing and complicated selection of pharmaceuticals and performance-enhancing medication–legally and in other ways that are given to horses.

“I didn't know much,” admitted Lillis. “Especially the restrictions of drug tests. I followed the project: 'I will speak to some toxicologists and a few test experts, and they will help me to follow science and find a pretty good picture of what has probably happened, we say, medina spirit.” Nothing could be the truth from the truth.

The famous coach Bob Baffert, who acts as a kind of anti -heroine in history, said Lillis that she had “with a very open mind”.

Coach Bob Baffert sees on Monday, April 28, 2025, in Louisville, Ky.

“I had no idea what my conclusion would be at the end of this project,” she said. “Will I develop a picture of someone I think that it probably uses illegal substances? Or will I develop a picture of someone I think that he is transforming scapegoats and a villain for the industry?”

And so Lillis weighs the score at Baffert: “I would say that Baffert has effectively become a scapegoat for the broader problems of the industry – which should not mean that Baffert has not made any mistakes or that he might not be sloppy in his management practices when it comes to medication.

“He is no better and no worse than many other horse coaches. He is part of this environment. And I respected Bob enormously as a horse trainer. He is an enormous rider. There is no one who knows how to select or prepare a horse better than bob.”

Lillis said: “I think the concept of well -being on the race track has reduced this idea of” Well, coaches are evil “. I don't think coaches have places where you can improve your animal husbandry. However, the entire industry is a system that has created incentives that are not always great for the animal. And I am really frustrated when coach is the only evil actor in this sins in this sins. I don't think it could be a little further away from the truth. I love horse trainers openly, and I think racetracks have just as much to answer and the bloodstock industry. “

She said, Baffert, who is personally a “real raconte”, is “a fascinating character” about which one should write about: “At the same time, in my opinion it is as worse than he was treated, it is also a symbol for some of the practices in the industry that I need for a certain way, which has a certain way that needs to survive a certain way, and if the sport has to Sport must survive. “

While Lillis paints a picture of positive reforms in animal husbandry that has undergone the race in recent years, it is a greater existential question: is it too late?

Is there a future for old racing in a new world that has changed fundamentally?

A world in which there are more legal gambling options in which the extensive land routes in racing in Mini shopping centers or subdivisions can be transformed, and finally in a world in which the only interaction of people with animals as pets in which most people have lost the concept of work of farm animals?

“They think of them like cats and dogs, and I wanted to act as a translator for the idea that these animals are not pets and that it is not naturally evil not Imagine them as pets.

“I had the feeling that there was this great separation in the understanding of the industry of the animal, which is basically a cattle – beloved cattle, but cattle is none by nature wrong.

This does not mean that the people who make their career in horse parity do not care, Lillis believes.

“I am sure that there are a few individual A-holes, as there are in every area. But the vast majority of people who work in the thoroughbred race is not call for the animal. They love the animal and do their best in the system in which they work.”

And this poisonous system Lillis is examining such a strong effect in her book and asks an honest settlement of the way in which the incentive structures in this commercial industry can harm horses.

Lillis argues that there are many reasons why we, as a society, should remedy this system and make sport more humane and sustainable: “Racing creates an enormous number of jobs. It keeps green spaces, it creates tax revenue. It manages to do agricultural jobs at a time when all of our other jobs hike and circles that deal with the Internet. A living animal?

And while she describes in the book how the industry improves through regulatory and cultural changes that significantly reduce deaths on the route, Lillis also paints an image of an industry in war.

“So I am not 100 % confident that the industry will be able to work together in time to save itself,” she said.

But if we lose the race, do we risk losing the beautiful, built thoroughbred horse yourself?

“The other big welfare thing that I think that people don't really deal with is when they have supporters who want to get rid of sport: if they end the race, who will pay for all the horses who suddenly have no value? It's great well -being,” she said.

“This is not like a greyhound race, in which you can absorb these animals in suburban areas and in cities.

“This is always a great frustration that I have with the people with 'racing”. I am like, ok, cool. That is a justified position. I can accept this position.

“However, I want people who have this point of view to read this book and say:” Oh, man, there are many practical problems that we have to consider whether this is the step we want to take. “

Because that may not be death, but the extinction of the racing horse.

Originally published: May 12, 2025 at 5:01 a.m. PDT

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