From the good people of Keeneland: “After an incident in Race 1 [Saturday] involving Cielo and jockey Flavien Prat, both were immediately attended to by Keeneland’s equine safety teams and UK HealthCare’s medical teams. Due to the severity of the injury, humane euthanasia was chosen in the interests of the horse. Our sincere condolences go out to Cielo’s connections.”
If this sounds familiar, it should. A version of this was circulated on Friday regarding the death of Gotta Lotta Tempo that afternoon. So this creates “incidents” – that would be dead horses – on consecutive days at one of America’s most celebrated tracks. And like the recently deceased Gotta, Cielo was only two years old – a horse baby – and under the whip for the first time.
While the aforementioned “incidents” were edited out of the Keeneland-approved replays, the graph for Cielo’s murder paints quite a picture (all emphasis mine):
“Rebel for a reason…hitting a fallen enemy enter the avenue. Blythes Ferry…a fallen enemy trampled enter the avenue. Cielo…fell enter the lane.”
Imagine the terror on that track. These are prey/flight animals and in this case just babies (all horses in this race are/were two). First, forced into a large metal device, after which he is herded into a tightly packed artificial herd (twelve horses strong) at unnatural speed by high-ranking whip-wielding people. One falls, two others hit (or ‘trample’) him – while the rest experience it all. What they do to these poor horses, as self-evidentis almost too terrible for words.
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