Lintner: Motion puts it best after Mongolian Groom’s breakdown

The Breeders’ Cup was about a furlong away from passing what California Sen. Dianne Feinstein termed a “critical test” of safety at Santa Anita Park when Mongolian Groom broke down in the stretch of Saturday’s Classic.

“If horse racing cannot be conducted in a safe and humane manner that protects the life and safety of horses and jockeys,” Feinstein wrote last week in a letter to the California Horse Racing Board, “it may be time to reexamine the future of this sport in our state and in our country.”

And so there will be headlines. Political posturing will continue. Animal rights activists will chirp.

But let’s not pretend as if Mongolian Groom was racing toward a finish line offering duality. Had he run past the wire rather than exit the track on an equine ambulance, racing may have avoided some short-term negative press. But that absolves the sport's ills only for a day.

More races are running Sunday at Santa Anita, Churchill Downs, Aqueduct and a host of other tracks around the country. Another Triple Crown season and an ensuing Breeders’ Cup follow in 2020, when these same discussions about animal welfare and safety in racing will continue.

Along the way, racing’s leadership is beginning to piece together what it means to stage the safest possible event. But while more can be done, it bears stating: There will be another breakdown.

That’s even with all the vet checks, out of competition testing and debate over medication and whipping. A CHRB official even said last week that synthetic surfaces could make their return in the state, too.

Tapeta produces a lower rate of catastrophic injuries than dirt. No surface can claim its number as zero.

Certainly Feinstein knows that, along with much of Saturday’s announced Santa Anita crowd of 67,811 at Santa Anita. Horse racing isn't a new phenomenon, and the game has always come with risks. Wagering, by the way, was up over last year’s Breeders’ Cup return to Churchill Downs.

This tweet from well-versed handicapper Jeremy Plonk stuck with me after Friday’s card:

Can the Breeders’ Cup walk away from the weekend insisting — as Feinstein wanted — that “racing conducted in a safe and humane manner that protects the life and safety of horses and jockeys”?

It's admittedly not a good look that a search of Mongolian Groom on XBTV.com -- an arm of The Stronach Group, which owns Santa Anita -- now yields no results. That wasn't the case before the Classic. And a number of racing fans are pouring over what training video there is to judge whether Mongolian Groom showed signs of lameness before his race.

What we do know is that every Breeders' Cup runner was checked over by three vets before race day. A number of high-profile vet scratches did occur, including Saturday morning's defection of second choice Imperial Hint from the Sprint.

Maybe there was a pre-existing condition; that's likely the source of many Santa Anita fatalities this year, and the track is working toward obtaining a scanner to detect them in the uture. You can make a case that Abel Cedillo should have stopped whipping Mongolian Groom as he backed up; but jockeys must ride to secure the best possible placing, and that rule could possibly be amended.

Or Mongolian Groom may have just taken a bad step. That happens because, again, the number will never be zero.

Trainer Graham Motion, who won Friday’s Juvenile Fillies Turf with Sharing, perhaps put it best in a message Sunday published on his Twitter account. And it’s no surprise that Motion, as classy as they come, was so eloquent on the issue.

“As they went in the gate for the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday,” he wrote,” it was the most perfect scene and the end to the most perfect day. Amazing stories of strength and determination in the most beautiful setting. Bricks and Mortar was stunning in victory, Uni and Got Stormy beat the boys and Vino Rosso got revenge.

“Sadly, however, it’s not a perfect world, and we put too much on ourselves if we think we can eliminate every single injury. Horses, like humans, get hurt.

“Horses had been supervised all week in the most thorough manner I have ever seen, and many positive changes to protocol were made in the lead up to the Breeders’ Cup. So now we must continue that path and make our sport the best it can be. It will never be perfect, but we came darn close this weekend at Santa Anita.”