Kentucky Derby Runs Amid Racing Crisis

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 146th running of the Kentucky Derby is Saturday, resuming after a four month delay due to the pandemic. While the event brings more attention and eyeballs to the sport of horse racing, the Derby also invokes a conversation surrounding the sport’s biggest crisis. The new ESPN podcast series "Bloodlines" looks into the deaths of horses at California’s Santa Anita racetrack, since a spike in fatalities began in 2019. Animal rights activists have been calling for reforms and even pushing for horse racing to be shut down altogether. The controversy has raised numerous questions about the complicated relationship between horses and the Bloodlines, and how the “sport of kings” found itself in jeopardy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Kentucky Derby 146 will have no spectators in the stands for an already delayed race come the first week of September.
0:10.0	And we really hoped that we would be able to have fans in the stands.
0:14.0	With Louisville being tabbed at Red Zone City by the CDC this week,
0:18.0	we just felt that we could not responsibly bring in 23,000 fans to the facility for the Derby.
0:26.7	After a four-month delay, the 146th running of the Kentucky Derby is happening this Saturday.
0:34.6	Call the most exciting two minutes in sports, it brings more attention to thoroughbred horse racing than any other event.
0:42.3	In this year, that also means more attention on thoroughbred deaths,
0:48.3	considered by many to threaten the viability of the sport itself.
0:52.6	Today, more on the reporting behind the new ESPN podcast series
0:57.6	Bloodlines and how the Sport of Kings landed in crisis. I'm Pablo Torre. It's Friday, September 4th.
1:08.4	This is ESPN Daily.
1:21.0	Ray Thompson, you are wearing a beard that is not merely streaked with some amount of white,
1:30.9	but is just magnificent in its scope. Well, I appreciate that. We are in the last hours of this beard because my face is itching and it's just too hot. So the very moment you and I are done talking, I am going to have it shaved.
1:36.7	Right, Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN, and he spent the last year reporting a new podcast
1:41.7	series titled Bloodlines on the Culture of Horse Racing.
1:46.1	Another off-brand thing that you did recently because no one in this pandemic right really
1:52.3	gets to go anywhere these days, journalists, reporters, you actually went somewhere to cover a story.
1:58.4	And as the rare sports writer who got to go somewhere, where you went
2:03.1	was particularly meaningful because Churchill Downs is the site of the Kentucky Derby being run this
2:10.1	weekend. What did you see at that legendary horse track? They let me in and, you know, I only saw two other people in the track.
2:23.8	You know, I walked through this unmarked green gate and all of a sudden there I was underneath the concourse where I have been many, many times.
2:31.9	And I've only ever been there just in total chaos, and I could
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