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ST’s Joe Clancy wrote a sports feature in the May 15 New York Times that covers the victory and death of Arcadius at the Iroquois Steeplechase in Nashville, Tenn. The powerful event struck Joe and pretty much anyone else who was there. You can read the Times article online or in the print edition (page B13). Here, Joe writes about what it was like.

They’re not supposed to end like this. Winner’s circle ceremonies are for the good in the sport, the triumphs, the back-slaps, the excitement, the joy. Saturday at Nashville, the aftermath was anything but happy as Arcadius died of an apparent aneurysm shortly after winning the Grade I Iroquois Steeplechase.

Multiple Grade I-winning steeplechaser Tax Ruling tries to make history Saturday with a three-peat in the Iroquois at Nashville, Tenn. Thirteen horses have won the $150,000 race, first run in 1941, twice in a row. None succeeded in the three-peat.

The Maryland Horse Breeders Association honored its 2011 champions last night at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis. Amazing setting, good company and one hysterical acceptance speech from trainer King T. Leatherbury.

Chris Read leaned over Sur La Tete’s withers and waited. The moment neared. All Read had to do was say when. His horse would do the rest. An extension of his stride, a lowering of his head, an acceleration. Sur La Tete would catch Good Night Shirt and make history. And then he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.

Old fishermen like to tell impatient rookies that “It’s called fishing, not catching.” The same could be said about owning horses – as in “It’s horse racing, not horse winning.”

Michael Leaf cut through the center of the Great Meadow course, abandoning his course walk. Comrades yelled to him, “What are you doing? You’ve still got half the course to walk.”
The too-tall, starving, wanna-be jockey shook his head, waved his arm and told them the deal.

Manown “Buck” Kisor paused, thought a minute and remembered a horse.

Slings and arrows. Name-calling. Finger-pointing. For the most part, that has been Thoroughbred racing’s response to recent New York Times pieces on the sport. The investigative journalism pointed out deficiencies, gaps, out-and-out ugliness on the topic of safety for horses and jockeys.

Billy Meister put a hand on Twill Do’s back, laughed and started talking.

“You know he had four broken ribs and is missing part of a lung, don’t you? You’d have never known it,” the trainer said as his horse walked past at the barn after Saturday’s Maryland Hunt Cup. “We turned him out every day and he bucked and played like normal. Like there was nothing wrong with him. How’d you like to run the Maryland Hunt Cup with only two-thirds of your lung function on one side?”