Mongolian Groom, a dark-bay four-year-old gelding, had beaten the favorite, McKinzie, just a few weeks before, right here on this track. The sun was sinking into the palm trees west of the stables as the horses, eleven of them, were loaded into the gate. The Breeders’ Cup Classic, which is a mile and a quarter and offers a six-million-dollar purse, came late in the day. Thoroughbreds, which can weigh twelve hundred pounds, have notoriously delicate ankles. During morning workouts, vets used binoculars to study their gait on the track. The animals were repeatedly tested for banned drugs. Their foremost concern, they told anyone who would listen, was the safety of their “equine athletes.” They had flooded the zone with veterinarians and expensive imaging equipment, screening for preëxisting conditions. Santa Anita management and Breeders’ Cup officials were desperate to have their event run smoothly. “Just get it on the ballot.” She meant a statewide referendum, which she felt sure would result in a ban. “Right now, our focus is on California,” she said. “My hat is quasi-glam.” She had been arrested at a previous protest at Santa Anita. “I’m making fun of the women who think that killing horses is glamorous,” she told me. Outside the track, animal-rights activists had been heckling racegoers under a banner that read “ HORSERACING KILLS HORSES.” They had a call-and-response going, street corner to street corner: “Horses don’t want to be forced to run!” “Just like us!” “Horses feel pain!” “Just like us!” Heather Wilson, a nurse anesthetist, wore huge fake eyelashes and an absurd cocked hat. Dianne Feinstein, the state’s senior senator, had released a letter calling the Breeders’ Cup races a “critical test for the future of horseracing.” Public dismay had risen to the point that Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, had told the Times that racing’s “time is up” if it did not reform. Since the beginning of the year, thirty-five horses had died at Santa Anita. The “handle”-the total betting for the day-was a healthy hundred and seventeen million dollars, but thoroughbred racing itself was on life support.
Sixty-eight thousand people packed the Art Deco grandstand, the apron, the infield, the high-priced suites. It was the twelfth and final race of a two-day series, at Santa Anita Park, the storied track near Los Angeles. What happened at the Breeders’ Cup World Championships in late 2019 looked like the end of horse racing in California, maybe in America. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.