Aqueduct, Saturday
All that’s great and terrible about racing was fully on display Saturday. The great, of course, was Horse of the Year Invasor overcoming a troubled trip to win the Donn Handicap by two lengths. The terrible was the ugly accident in Aqueduct’s fifth that left two horses dead and one jockey injured.
Every breakdown is shocking, but Cadillac Cruiser’s was especially disturbing. A 5-year-old gelding with a record of 15-6-3-0, Cadillac Cruiser was running for $7500 three weeks after finishing fifth as the favorite in a $25,000 starter handicap. He’d won at the same level two weeks before and won a $35,000 claimer five weeks before that. On Saturday, though, he was running for a fifth of his value. The connections were offering what looked like a competitive horse at a rock-bottom price, and the reason for that was suggested by the front bandages Cadillac Cruiser showed up in the paddock wearing for the first time in all his starts in trainer Rene Araya’s barn: The gelding was sore or getting there, and owner and trainer wanted to unload him fast.
That Cadillac Cruiser would break his right front leg and fall in front of the pack going around the clubhouse turn and that another horse, Jimmy O, would fall over him, dying instantly of a broken neck, was hardly the guaranteed outcome of his starting on Saturday, but it also wasn’t an entirely unpredictable risk. If any good can come of Saturday’s sad spectacle, let it be that track officials and vets ask more questions when horses drop so precipitously in class and that such horses are given more pre-race scrutiny.
