They got horse racing in Heaven

I'll start by saying the jockey on Eight Belles did nothing wrong. You can go for the blame to the breeders - and start many generations ago. Thoroughbreds don't run much nowadays - maybe a dozen races in a year. The Triple Crown is hard to win because it's three very different races over a month's time. A lot of today's horses are simply too fragile to do that. The premium on speed and not really caring how sound a horse is at four - which, by the way is still not a fully mature animal even though it's often a retired one. We're talking about overbred teen-agers. Yes, they love to run, but they aren't made to run that fast, that long, on those surfaces, carrying that weight. In fact, a horse can't run that fast in nature. I don't think Eight Belles is dead because her jockey pushed her too hard, or she shouldn't have been in the Derby in the first place. If she'd run in the Oaks she'd probably have gone down the same way.

But that's not what this post is about.

This is about the notion that Eight Belles died because it was God's will.

While I don't want to belittle anything that helps anyone get through, this absolutely stopped me dead this morning. In the Baltimore Sun, Sandra McKee quotes Larry Jones:

Yesterday morning, the filly's trainer, Larry Jones, his eyes puffy and swollen from a near sleepless night, stood outside his barn still disbelieving.

"I keep looking, and she ain't in there," he said. "She ain't coming back. As to why, we'd like to think God wanted her in his stable. He gave us signs all along the way that we were in the race we were supposed to be in. He [God] put her in that race and let her run a great race, and then he took her. I know God doesn't make mistakes. There's a reason for this. I just don't know what it is yet."

God wanted her in his stable? God put her in the Derby, let her run well, and then killed her?

I honestly don't understand people who reach for that rationale. God actually cares about horse racing? About race horses? And then demonstrates that care by creating a brave and beautiful animal, sending her out to race ("gave us signs all along the way"), and then shattering her legs and ankles beyond repair? If he "wanted her in his stable" couldn't he have killed her painlessly in her stall?

Yet, "God doesn't make mistakes. There's a reason for this. I just don't know what it is yet."

There are those who might think the reason is to end horse racing. There are those who think the reason might be sadism. There are those who think the reason is some mysterious crooked line with which God is going to draw straight - who knows, perhaps some child watching the Derby will be motivated to grow up and, I don't know, figure out how to heal horses' shattered legs, or pass legislation to prevent horses younger than five from racing at all.

And there are those who see no hand of God in this at all.

Me? I'm truly baffled. Not by Eight Belles' injury and death. By the notion that God has a stable of race horses. (Yes, I expect it's a figure of speech, but listen to a lot of people talk and Heaven will be just like Earth.) Are there races there? Parimutuel betting? Who'd run against God's horse? Does he have favorites? Do they all win - is it heaven if they lose? Or do they just stand around all day - that wouldn't be heaven for the horses...

I don't mean to make fun, but... doesn't it sound like a bad movie? It's just ... baffling.

I don't understand how the idea can hold together in someone's mind enough to give them comfort.

Eight Belles was brave and beautiful and fast and competitive. She was also fragile and young. Kent Desormeaux, Big Brown's jockey, said it best: "Eight Belles showed you her life for our enjoyment today."

Where's God in that?