It was a gorgeous Saturday in August at the storied Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., when Maple Leaf Mel, the undefeated gray filly, came thundering down the homestretch, seemingly on her way to victory.
I was there with my colleague Joe Drape and a film crew to shoot the documentary “The New York Times Presents: Broken Horses,” which is now airing on FX and Hulu. It explores the recent rash of horse fatalities on the sport’s biggest stages, including 12 surrounding the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, where we also filmed.
Maple Leaf Mel was a feel-good story the industry sorely needed. She was owned by the former N.F.L. coach Bill Parcells and named after the Canadian trainer Melanie Giddings, who after completing cancer treatment had decided to start her own training operation.
But a happy ending wasn’t meant to be. Maple Leaf Mel buckled just ahead of the finish line, sustaining a fracture in her right front leg. The crowd gasped, then the racetrack fell silent. In seconds, Giddings, watching from the winner’s circle, went from celebrating to crying. She was not the only one.
Maple Leaf Mel was euthanized in front of the iconic wooden clubhouse, with its red-and-white-striped awnings. Photographers on the other side of the track did not have the luxury of a tarp blocking the final moments of the filly’s life. The bugler played “Amazing Grace.” Some attendees headed for the exits.
It was a heart-wrenching scene, one that played out again three weeks later, on Travers Stakes day, when the undefeated colt New York Thunder sustained a catastrophic injury to his left front leg while leading yards from the finish line.
In all, 13 horses died last summer while training or racing at Saratoga. The two breakdowns at the finish line were among the worst that Joe and I have seen, and we’ve been following this sport for a long time.
Joe learned about racing from his father, who taught him to read The Daily Racing Form as a child. When he got older, he began visiting racetracks on his own — so far, over 100 in more than a dozen countries. He has been writing about horse racing for The Times since 1997, and was part of an investigative team that in 2012 produced “Breakdown,” a series of articles about how lack of oversight in racing endangered horses and jockeys. He has also written three books on the sport.
I had a similar path. My uncle married into a family that owned and bred racehorses. As a child, I visited the winner’s circle with them at Thistledown near Cleveland, and I attended their family reunion, held each year at Keeneland in the heart of the bluegrass. I was hooked.
When my journalism career brought me to The Baltimore Sun, I contributed to the Preakness Stakes coverage. And when I joined The Times’s Sports desk in 2006, I teamed up with Joe to create the Rail, a blog that covered the Triple Crown season.
We were able to follow California Chrome, American Pharoah and Justify on their respective Triple Crown journeys in 2014, 2015 and 2018, and spent many days at Churchill Downs, Pimlico Race Course and Belmont Park, watching for any signs of problems that would derail their quests. Even though Chrome fell short, there was no lack of material for incredible storytelling. Those were some of our favorite assignments.
Horse racing has been part of The Times since the newspaper’s inception in 1851. In the 1980s and ’90s, the reporters Steven Crist and Steve Cady were cleareyed storytellers. Before them, Arthur Daley and Red Smith were poets and Pulitzer Prize winners. Smith is even credited with the famous line that to get to Saratoga Springs from New York City, “you drive north for about 175 miles, turn left on Union Avenue and go back 100 years.”
For Joe and me, Saratoga is our favorite racetrack. It is part of a bustling town where horses rule and everyone comes to celebrate the sport from mid-July through Labor Day.
Joe used to go there with his father. His son, who is 19, has spent part of every summer of his life at the track known colloquially as the Spa. I am now doing the same with my 5-year-old son, who picks his horses by the color of their saddle cloths.
We appreciated the sport, and that’s why we were so disheartened when, while covering the biggest race days, we saw so many horses die. Our reporting at the Kentucky Derby was the basis of the new documentary, but the story did not end there. “Another one is down,” became a common refrain in the press box.
When it came time to build the narrative arc of the film, we had a robust discussion about how much to show of the breakdowns. No one wants to watch horses suffer, but that is what makes this issue so important. We decided that we would be judicious, but not shy away from the problem. Unfortunately, you have to see the horses go down on the track to truly understand the issue — and compel the industry to act.
To be fair, the rate of breakdowns during races has been trending downward since data started being compiled in 2009, and the adoption of uniform rules under the recently created Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority has given the industry a fresh start.
There are changes in motion, but there is much more work to be done. No one wants another beautiful day at Saratoga, or elsewhere, to be marred by a magnificent thoroughbred paying the ultimate price at the finish line.
If that continues, the track might not be around long enough for our children to take their children there.
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