Yesterday, February 27th was Celebrate Polar Bear Day, according to the National Wildlife Federation.
This got me thinking … what do polar bears and horses have in common?
Both have been left stranded by global warming.
To be fair, global warming is far scarier for the polar bears: projections by the U.S. Geological Survey say two thirds (2/3!) of the polar bear population will disappear by 2050.
When it comes to horses, global warming is just messing with our calendar. The extreme shifts in weather have caused cancellations from coast to coast: snow in New York, rain in California, frozen ground in Arkansas, tornados in Texas – I don’t know about Glenn Beck, but the racing industry certainly believes in global warming.
Unlike a football field which can be plowed, or a baseball diamond that can be covered – a racetrack is a wide open exposed expanse of dirt and grass subject to whatever conditions mother nature has in store. This means that when the ground is frozen, as was the case at Oaklawn Park, or there are 2 inches of standing water on the Santa Anita track – horses and human lives are at risk.
Often the only solution for track management is to reschedule the races. This isn’t a major hurdle – it’s as simple as notifying horsemen of a change to the conditions book. But this isn’t just any ‘ole time of year: we’re in Derby season. And with just 62 days to go, every moment counts.
There are only 25 races for horses to earn the money that gets them into the starting gate. Until the next round of Derby preps in mid-March, every 3yo colt (and some fillies) is considered a contender. Therefore every move – every work, every oat in the feed tub, every rubdown by a groom, every walk of the shedrow – is carefully choreographed to get to the big dance.
So when a Derby prep is rescheduled – such as the Southwest at Oaklawn last weekend or the Sham at Santa Anita this past Saturday – it throws a major wrench into a trainer’s carefully laid out plan.
When a race is moved back even just a week, it can become a major hurdle for trainers: not all horses can handle a shortened time between races, or they may not have been nominated for other races because they were set on their original plan. When John Sadler shipped Domonation to Oaklawn for a run in the Southwest, he not only didn’t run the day he was supposed to, but he was unable to train for 2 days due to the solid earth – thereby setting back the horse’s training schedule for weeks.
As a nod to the critics of the synthetic surfaces: yes, the problems at Santa Anita probably wouldn’t have happened if the track was real dirt.
With weather wrecking havoc on trainer’s Derby plans and 2 of the 25 (or 8%) Derby preps being rescheduled due to weather, can we all agree that global warming isn’t a Sham?
