The final ride of Homeboykris made me love horse racing, and then he died

I picked Homeboykris because of his name, his history of strong performances on dirt, and because I figured it was boring to bet on the favorite. I’d never attended a big horse race before the Preakness Stakes on Saturday at Pimlico, and I had eight hours to kill and money to spend. I put $5 on Homeboykris to win the first race, and watched as his odds ballooned from 7/2 to 9/1, as if everybody else in the world knew betting on him was a bad idea.

And then Homeboykris won. He started off in the front of the pack, and eventually overtook the lead. I watched in euphoric disbelief as the random horse I picked sprinted down the stretch and across the finish line ahead of everybody else’s. It was an easy summary of why horse racing is so powerful. In other sports, a prayer can take decades to be answered. In horse racing, a prayer and some vehement yelling turned my $5 into $60 in two minutes.

And then Homeboykris died. He had his picture taken in the winner’s circle, he trotted about 100 yards, and he collapsed, most likely of a heart attack. My guess is he died around the time I was collecting my winnings. His carcass was shipped to a veterinary hospital in Pennsylvania to determine the cause of death, according to the Baltimore Sun. A 9-year-old who ran in the 2010 Kentucky Derby, his body could no longer handle the rigors of racing.

Homeboykris was told to run fast, so he ran fast. As a horse, he didn’t know this could cause cardiac arrest, or, for that matter, what cardiac arrest is, or probably what death is. He just knew to do what he was trained to do, and he did it so well that he died.

He was joined in death by Pramedya, a filly who fractured her leg during the fourth race. She was euthanized on the track.

Horse racing is not the only sport where competitors die. Two soccer players died last month on back-to-back days, one in Romania, one in Brazil, both of heart attacks.

But in horse racing, it’s legitimately common for competitors to die. It’s tough to say how often horses die: The Equine Injury Database estimates 1.87 horses die every 1,000 starts. Considering most races have about 10 horses in them, and most racetracks have about 10 races a day during racing season, and there are over 10 racetracks in the United States, there’s a good chance that a racehorse dies somewhere in America most days races are held.

Nobody at Pimlico seemed to make a big deal about the deaths of multiple horses. There was no announcement to the general public -- the PA announcer continued announcing routine updates, like which horses won and which horses were scratched from upcoming races.

And there was certainly no change in plans. Horses kept racing, even as two recently alive race horses were carted off. People were at Pimlico to see the Preakness, and it would take more than two dead horses to stop that race from being held.

When horses achieve greatness like American Pharoah did last year, the horse racing community urges everybody else to treat the horses as we would great human athletes. But we would never gloss over a human athlete’s death the way these deaths were glossed over, and we would never tolerate a sport that routinely killed human athletes.

I was deeply conflicted in the stands. Part of me wanted to enjoy the 135,000-person party I was attending. I love acting like an idiot while wearing nice clothes, I love betting on things, and I love messy outdoors drinking. The Preakness is about 15 different parties at once, and they’re all great.

Part of me wanted the whole thing to close and never reopen again. These beautiful, majestic creatures brought everybody here. And two of them just died. For our entertainment. They died so that we could yell and enjoy ourselves for a few minutes and win money and lose money. Why can’t we just bet on sports where nothing dies?

There is no doubt in my mind that the people who love horse racing love horses. Because of horse racing, tens of thousands of horses live longer, better lives than if horse racing did not exist. Hell, the reason these horses are alive in the first place is because they’re systematically bred to become fast.

I just wonder if there is a way for horse racing to exist in a way that horses do not die. It seems unlikely. Their bodies need to put so much power on such fragile legs, and unlike human athletes, there’s no way for horses to communicate to humans when their body is reaching its breaking point. I suspect that as hard as the humans try to make the sport safer for the animals they love, horse racing will never not kill horses.

Most of the attendees at Pimlico probably never knew Homeboykris lived or died, but I will remember him. His victory taught me why people love horse racing, but his death taught me why I never will.