Today will mark the 140th Kentucky Derby. Cameras will transmit an elite field of 20 magnificent thoroughbreds prancing to the tune of "My Old Kentucky Home."
Press coverage will spotlight celebrities, interview top trainers, handicap the field, glamorize wealthy owners and gush over the pageantry on parade. At post time, horses will charge forth from a cold steel starting gate to deliver the world an event famously billed as, "the most exciting two minutes in sports."
Exciting, that is, to those who don't know the excessive courses of drugs and pain-killing regimens these 3-year-old colts have endured. Exciting to those who don't know 23,130 other thoroughbreds were born the same year as these horses were. And exciting to those who don't know that each year, approximately 20,000 thoroughbreds are sent to slaughter for human consumption, as was the 1986 Derby winner Ferdinand.
In March, the animal rights group PETA released a video through The New York Times that shocked viewers with a collage of cruel and abusive practices forced upon thoroughbreds. Yet, I was not surprised.
In 2011, after a lifetime spent with thoroughbreds, I learned the inconvenient, very ugly truth about horse racing. While investigating the breakdown of my New York-bred Bourbon Bandit at Aqueduct Racetrack, I discovered that the excessive and illegal use of drugs to keep injured horses racing was pervasive and mainstream. Whereas athletes are disparaged and sometimes publicly destroyed by doping, racehorses are restrained and forced to be drugged.
Like PETA, I also took my story to The New York Times; it, too, made the front page.
The racing industry's reaction to PETA's expose has been to launch an attack on the messenger rather than outing abusers in the industry. Casual fans and $2 bettors don't want to believe it; acknowledging the truth behind the glitz would ruin their day at the races. Big bettors don't care.
It is commonly thought that "abuse" occurs only at the lowest levels of racing. PETA's video featured the biggest names in racing, among them champion trainer Steve Asmussen, whose Tapiture is one of this year's top Derby contenders. After its release, Asmussen's 2014 Hall of Fame nomination was tabled.
Yet prior to the video, which captured multiple violations of racing rules and state anti-cruelty statutes in Asmussen's stables at Saratoga and Churchill Downs, the 16-member nominating committee glossed over the 75 doping and other violations in his career.
Every day on American racetracks officials turn a blind eye while veterinarians drug unsound horses to enable them to race until they die on the track or simply disappear behind the scenes. Win or lose, the majority of American thoroughbreds are packed into crude livestock trailers without pain medication, food or water, and are never seen again.
The picture of racing presented on Derby Day does not include the crippled horses that run on pain killers until their legs collapse, or the thousands of horses that are shipped to Mexico and Canada to be torturously slaughtered and butchered before they have even reached a quarter of their lifespan.
On Derby Day, what the public sees is a lie. And what commentators won't tell viewers is that every bet placed continues to fund this cycle of abuse in the Sport of Kings.
Susan Kayne, is a lifelong equine enthusiast and a former thoroughbred breeder and owner. She is the creator of Unbridled, an award-winning TV series focused on making life better for horses.