Flatter: Who can sleep after the loss of Wild On Ice?

I do not sleep well. It has become a function of my aging and Lord knows what else in the past two decades. Since I decided in 2004 that workin’ 9 to 5 was no way to make a livin’, snoozin’ 11 to 7 is no luxury that I am given.

So it was Wednesday night, after fighting what I thought was a cold all week, when I did the old swab test that has become a way of life in the ’20s. Ten minutes later, the pink and blue lines showed up, and for the second time I tested positive for COVID.

Timing is everything.

Splendid luck. And with the Kentucky Derby on the boil. I should have gone right to bed, but I could not. My wife is blessed with the ability to sleep through everything from New York traffic to Kentucky tornado sirens. I waited to tell her about my failed test, and I spent the rest of the night working in the home office.

Before I knew it, Wednesday had become Thursday. It was about 5 a.m. I was supposed to go to the track to watch Derby works. I texted a couple folks whom I knew were going to be up at that hour. I confessed my COVID sin, groused about my plans being altered, and then …

“S---, Wild On Ice pulled up. Bad left hind.”

That text rattled my phone at 5:46 a.m. Any ambition I had about going back to sleep at some point that morning were replaced by the rush of adrenaline that comes with breaking news.

Between that moment and 10:24 a.m., it was a typical case of hunting and chasing facts. No different from any other developing story.

It was at 10:24 when El Paso Times sports-writing icon Felix Chavez broke the news that Wild On Ice, who had won his region’s biggest horse race almost exactly one month earlier, had been euthanized.

Timing is everything.

For more than 4 1/2 hours, the Wild On Ice story had morphed into how Kentucky Derby 2023 would be a little different. How would Skinner suddenly fit in as yet another closer in a field full of them? It was also a story about cruel luck for Joel Marr. How a nice, hard-working trainer from New Mexico was experiencing déjà vu after bringing Blamed to Churchill Downs five years ago only to have her suffer a training injury a week before the Kentucky Oaks. There was 60-year-old Ken Tohill, too, the jockey who overcame a drinking problem and was about to become the oldest rider in the recorded history of the Kentucky Derby.

That 10:24 a.m. news of the death of Wild On Ice turned into a fork in the road. True horse lovers, the people who make up most of our sport, expressed their genuine feelings of loss across social media. The emotions that came from these messages of sympathy were palpable.

At the same time, animal-rights extremists pounced. Within a few hours, one of the most notorious among them posted an uncredited photo of Wild On Ice. The next entry on its Twitter timeline was a “40% off coupon code” to buy T-shirts from its online store. No lie. I have saved the screenshot as proof.

Timing is everything.

Also around 10:24 a.m., the name Wild On Ice virtually disappeared from any mention by Churchill Downs, which to my knowledge never confirmed the gelding’s death. It was as if he were a fungible element who never lived.

I get it. The euthanizing did not happen within the acreage at 700 Central Avenue. But neither have workouts by Derby contenders at Keeneland and Hawthorne and Santa Anita, nor were the decisions in Japan to accept invitations and send horses across the Pacific, yet those facts are dutifully chronicled.

These marching orders that produce a very different version of a mummers’ parade undoubtedly come from way up high in echelons that have been among the most public supporters of racing reform that led to the creation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. One of HISA’s early tenets was to put every racing state under the same burden to report injuries and deaths. An open database was trumpeted.

However, a look Friday morning at the HISA website and its FAQ page revealed a murky answer to the self-posed question, “Will equine injuries and fatalities be reported by HISA?”

“Equine catastrophic injuries will be entered in the Jockey Club’s equine-injury database,” the site answered, “as has been done in previous years.”

That looks to me like business as usual, especially in Kentucky, where racetracks are not required to say boo about breakdowns. Yet the original HISA bill that was passed by Congress and signed by President Trump as an amendment to COVID relief, said, “Not later than one year after the program effective date, and after notice and an opportunity for public comment …, the authority in consultation with the (Federal Trade) Commission shall develop and maintain a nationwide database of racehorse safety, performance, health and injury information.”

A legislative, legal patch that was designed to fend off ongoing court fights against HISA was signed into law by President Biden late last year as part of a huge spending bill, but it did not alter the original language about the database.

Oh, yes. That part of HISA took effect July 1. By law, the authority still has two months to craft that database. In other words, Wild On Ice’s name need not appear on any such paperwork.

Timing is everything.

In a seemingly unrelated matter, Will Levis was not chosen Thursday night in the first round of the NFL Draft. He supposedly was a sure thing to go in the top 10. The images of him lingering with his family in the green room in Kansas City are indelible. That is because they were all over ABC and ESPN and NFL Network and every TV newscast in Kentucky beginning with a W.

Ah, yes. In Kentucky, where Levis played his college ball. His name became household around here, especially in homes where they bleed Wildcat blue.

In another seemingly unrelated matter, Lamar Jackson got a big, fat contract this week from the Baltimore Ravens. The $260 million for five years with a $185 million guarantee for right now were widely reported nationally and here in the commonwealth.

Jackson, you know, played his college ball on the other side of the railroad bridge from Churchill Downs. His name already had become household around here, especially in homes where they bleed Cardinal red.

With all this football talk, the news about Wild On Ice became an afterthought for the mainstream media, if it ever was a thought at all.

I heard someone who watches racing from afar say that it was a good thing what happened at 5:46 a.m. Thursday did not happen around 6:46 p.m. next Saturday, when a few zillion people will pass through the door of our little “Truman Show.” It was one of those conclusions that might come off as tone deaf, but such thoughts are inevitable and only human.

Timing is everything.

The larger point here is that racing need not go into a cone of silence whenever something bad happens. Why not face these things head on?

Racing casualties should not be treated like family secrets that are hotter to handle than the rolls at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Dialogues about them need not turn into exercises in self-flagellation, either. On the contrary, they should be teaching moments. Look at how much the public in general and the racing industry in particular learned from very open discussions of Ruffian in 1975 and Barbaro in 2006 and Eight Belles in 2008 and Santa Anita in 2019.

This is not to suggest we need to see replays of catastrophic moments or images of distress, although that is an understandable debate that certainly can be broadened beyond racing.

One more thing. This was written between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. EDT. Honestly, who can sleep at times like these?

Timing is everything.