Flatter: Some critics cannot be heard through all the smoke

Most of June has come and gone since Belmont Stakes week, when there was a collective concern about the never-ending wildfires in Canada and how they would foul the air for the big race and how horses would be put at risk and how this was a potential crime against them.

Of course, the wind shifted and the blew the stench away from Long Island. That was just what was generated by the animal-rights extremists.

The smoke from Canadian bakin’ has not gone away, but the mainstream spotlight on racing certainly has. It is a rite of passage that spring brings the Kentucky Derby and, with it, the annual if ephemeral gaze of non-racing fans. The rite of passage that comes with summer is that the drive-by spectators find other pursuits. Lather, rinse, repeat next May.

But about all that colourful air from our neighbours in the epicentre of all the fires. The great white smoke from the great white north choked the racing schedule this week. Thistledown canceled two cards, and five other Thoroughbred tracks called off races of their own Wednesday and Thursday.

Through all that, though, isn’t it strange how the animal-rights demagogues have gone silent? During Belmont week, they were not shy in hectoring federal regulators and government leaders to order horses to stay in their barns if the air-quality index looked more like the over-under betting total on an NBA game. Their pile-on in social media cut through the chunky-style air like a battalion of gas-powered leaf blowers.

Yet here we are this week with more tracks and more horses theoretically threatened by the air that we breathe, and the self-styled spokespersons for the equine community have gone silent.

What changed? It could not have been the message. In some cases the typical AQI reading at certain racetracks has looked like the oven setting for keeping a roast warm. The horses experiencing these conditions would not have known their races fell short of the $1.5 million and classic glory of June 10, so it seemed the risk had not been altered.

What was different was the stage. If the Belmont Stakes was a Broadway production filled with summer tourists wanting to take in a show, the mid-week maiden races at Horseshoe Indianapolis and Belterra Park may as well have been in community playhouses.

That meant the number of people paying attention was not the same as it was during Belmont week. Let’s face it. A protest is only as good as its audience. Without onlookers, it is like the proverbial tree in the forest.

If I may be so brazen as to plagiarize myself by repeating something I wrote on Twitter this week, bad air inspired animal-rights extremists to bleat when they saw the bright lights and big stage through the haze before the Belmont Stakes. Those same demagogues were quiet this week even though more tracks faced an air-quality crisis and a federally mandated threshold to shut down. Their silence was proof they are not activists so much as they are opportunistic mercenaries.

A million years ago in my early days as a kid reporter, a not-quite-as-young colleague came back to our TV newsroom in Chico, Calif., with film – yes, film – of a protest somewhere in town. The pickets were organized, they had a spokesperson, they conveyed a message, and they felt good about themselves for airing their grievances for that night’s local news.

The reporter who covered that story, though, said he was not done.

“I’m going back there,” he said.

“What did you forget?” the news director asked.

“You’ll see.”

Out the door he went. A half-hour later he came back with more film.

“More of the same, right?” the boss asked.

“You’ll see.”

About an hour later, the report was ready to be screened. There was all the predictable footage of the protest with the pickets and the spokesperson and the message.

And then the reporter appeared on the screen to say, “I came back here a half-hour after that interview to see how the protest was going.”

The camera panned over, and no one was there.

In closing his report, my colleague said, “Once our camera left, so did they.”

Then as now with the animal-rights cabal, the passion was not in backing some cause as much as it was in making some noise, if only to satisfy the people making it.

Another colleague, who is a little older, reminded me recently that not all activists are alike. He said the most prominent organization, whose name I am loathe to use, is “one of the more moderate animal-rights groups.” That it “has become sort of like Kleenex, the generic. ... While they would love to see horse racing go away, (it) is not the most extreme group.”

I beg to differ. That group with the four-letter name that sounds like a flat bread may be the stereotypical wolf in sheep’s clothing. It will cozy up to racing’s establishment behind a façade of a willingness to work toward common goals. All the while, though, it is setting itself up to be the next great betrayer, following in the footsteps of Judas, Benedict Arnold and Count Baltar. Last time I checked, that organization still uses undercover operatives to infiltrate racetracks in order to gather information and then present it out of context to an uninitiated, general public that does not care to hear any rebuttal, credible though it may be.

This is not to gloss over what ails our game. We know about the 12 horses who lost their lives in a 30-day period at Churchill Downs and the one on the Preakness undercard and the two during Belmont Stakes weekend. In the three weeks since, at least five more Thoroughbreds died after getting hurt in training or races at tracks across the country. That is not a big number. It is not zero, either.

What animal advocates do not admit is there are honest efforts being made to continue a 14-year trend that has seen the number of deaths that we know of drop from 2.0 per 1,000 starts to 1.2. Just this week at Churchill Downs, I got a demonstration of StrideSafe, the monitoring device that can help trainers identify a horse who is off. It has the potential to anticipate a previously undetected injury. I will have more about that next week in written, video and audio reports.

This tool is just one example that, for all that is wrong with this sport, there are good people who are trying their damnedest to address what should be the most important challenge. That is to keep horses and humans fit and healthy and safe and racing. Period.

As for those who want to eradicate horse racing from the sports menu, I am sure I will see you when you feel like we are ready to have a different kind of smoke blown at us.