Mike Brunker Horse racing editor • Profile • E-mail

Following the tragic death of the filly Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby, the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is pressuring horse racing officials to adopt a series of safety recommendations that one industry leader on Tuesday called “well-intentioned but badly misguided.”

Since the 3-year-old filly was euthanized on the Churchill Downs racetrack Saturday after breaking both her front ankles moments after finished second behind Big Brown, PETA has banged out a drumbeat of press releases and Web site postings painting horse racing as a “dirty business … no better than dogfighting.”

While PETA favors a ban on horse racing, spokeswoman Kathy Guillermo said Tuesday that the organization would be willing to stand down if the racing industry agrees to take four immediate steps to improve safety for horses and alleviate suffering: Ban whipping of horses; prohibit the racing of horses before their third birthday; replace dirt tracks with artificial racing surfaces; and limit the number of times a horse can run each year.

Barring such concessions, PETA plans for the first time to organize protests at two of the sport’s marquee events — the Preakness Stakes on May 17 and the Belmont Stakes three weeks later, she said.

PETA launched its campaign within hours of the race, first calling for the suspension of the jockey’s license of Gabriel Saez, the 20-year-old Panamanian rider who piloted Eight Belles in the Derby, contending that the filly was “doubtlessly injured before the finish line, yet Saez whipped her repeatedly in the home stretch.”

Then PETA took on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for placing a bet on Eight Belles, saying that made her partly culpable in the filly’s death.

On Tuesday the group changed tack again, calling on the Kentucky Commonwealth Attorney’s Office for Louisville to investigate whether animal cruelty charges against Saez, trainer Larry Jones or owner Rick Porter are warranted.

The group has succeeded in creating a stir in racing circles.

Lisa Underwood, executive director of the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority, said that as of early Tuesday, the agency had received 23,000 e-mails — the majority a pre-written protest letter sent using a form on the PETA Web site — that clogged its e-mail system for a time.

PETA also orchestrated a protest Tuesday outside the agency’s offices in Lexington, Ky., an event that drew about 20 protesters and an equal number of pro-racing counterprotesters.

Racing officials have bridled under the onslaught of bad publicity and are beginning to fight back.

Alex Waldrop, president and CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, said in an interview Tuesday that PETA had crossed the line by “making accusations about this young jockey who did nothing wrong. … I think PETA is exploiting this tragedy for their own benefit.”

PETA also has taken a few knocks from the media, which is generally sympathetic to moves to improve racehorse safety.

Newsday columnist Wallace Matthews wrote in Monday’s newspaper that “PETA … is exploiting Eight Belles every bit as much as it says the racing industry did, and is treating Saez with the same kind of cruelty and inhumanity it purports to abhor toward animals.”

Waldrop, a former president at Churchill Downs, was especially disdainful of PETA’s call for a criminal investigation.

“To allege animal cruelty against someone who races pursuant to all the rules and regulations of the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority has only one motive and that is to gain publicity for their cause,” he said.

The battle for hearts and minds is a tough one for the racing industry, which has a long history of downplaying the problem of racehorse injuries and only last year implemented a nationwide system for reporting of racetrack fatalities and injuries.

But PETA also has opened itself for criticism by asserting with no evidence that Eight Belles was injured before the finish line.

Guillermo backed away from that assertion on Tuesday, saying, “I think it’s difficult to know, and that’s why we want an investigation. … We want to know if it’s possible that the horse felt pain before she broke her ankles. A horse who feels pain will slow down, but a horse who feels pain and is being whipped will keep running.”

PETA also may have a financial interest in the fight.

In 2006, the year Barbaro sustained a leg injury in the Preakness Stakes, PETA, a 501 (c)(3) charity, reported that it raised a record $29.36 million in direct public support, a 15 percent increase from the previous year.

But Guillermo, PETA’s director of laboratory investigations who said she got involved in the racing campaign because she has a background in show jumping, denied that the current campaign is about money.

“We don’t measure it in fundraising terms,” she said. “For us, progress is something we measure by change.”

She said he had been writing commentaries prior to the Triple Crown and other big racing events for a decade calling for what she described as moderate reforms and, when Eight Belles went down as she was galloping out after the race, “something in me just snapped.”

“I thought ‘What is the difference between horse racing and dogfighting,” she said. “One has an acceptable veneer over it but they’re both about exploiting animals for profit and in both cases the animals end up broken and dead.”

Waldrop called the comparison absurd and said PETA’s so-called safety proposals are a clear case of putting the cart before the horse.

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