I'll Have Another: Why Triple Crown Victory Won't Save Horse Racing

If I'll Have Another wins the Triple Crown this June with yet another thrilling victory at the 2012 Belmont Stakes, horse racing will still continue to fade into obscurity. 

Horse racing will remain a hobby for often-obsessive gamblers and so-called animal lovers with perhaps a little too much extra spending money. 

Just take a minute to read Jeff MacGregor's piece on ESPN.com, in which he claims that "it is much too late for a Triple Crown winner to save horse racing. The price of its waste and cruelty is at last too high, even for us."

MacGregor is right on the money with his assessment about one of the most brutal sports still in existence.

There is nothing happy or pretty about what goes on behind the scenes or often times right in front of our face during three Saturday evenings in spring. 

The sport produces some unsettling outcomes. Just think back to 2006 Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness Stakes hopeful Barbaro.

ESPN's Pat Forde wrote a piece in 2007 pertaining to Barbaro's death and the "harsh reality" of Horse Racing. Forde is 100 percent correct when he said that "for every Seabiscuit, it seems there are two or three Barbaros."

It's unfortunate, but it's our history, though in recent years the staying power of horse racing has become a primary concern. 

MacGregor draws a great comparison between horse racing and boxing:

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"Good or bad, we can't help ourselves. There is beauty beyond money and a passion beyond corruption, and if I'll Have Another runs the Belmont on June 9, he'll run not against the odds or even logic, but against himself and history, and to redeem, however briefly, our own bad practices. A 2012 Triple Crown will be to thoroughbred racing what Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao will be to boxing: a brilliant, purifying moment that cannot slow the sport's unstoppable descent into irrelevance."

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The glory and pride of maintaining and raising a Triple Crown-winning thoroughbred is hardly worth the cost, financially and morally. 

I'll Have Another is an exceptional story and one that deserves our attention. But regardless of whether we witness a Triple Crown champion this June, horse racing is in trouble and it cannot be saved. 

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