The Trident

Issue date: 1/31/07 Section: Sports

This past Monday, the world said goodbye to a fine horse named Barbaro. His doctors spoke loving words of remembrance, thousands of fans mourned, and this sports fan breathed a big ol' sigh of relief. For all of you who have had the pleasure of never hearing about Barbaro, he was the horse who won the Kentucky Derby last May and then suffered a career ending injury only two weeks later. After 8 months of highly publicized medical treatment, Barbaro was euthanized this Monday.

Not only did his death put to rest months of horrible pain for the poor horse, it put to rest the horrible pain of all of the times I wanted to throw the remote at the TV because Sportscenter decided to do another story on him when all I wanted to see was some highlights of human sports. I can't say it ever surprised me; this certainly isn't the first time ESPN has beaten a dead horse (count it!). We had to hear about Terrell Owens for two straight months when it wasn't even football season. The Michigan-Ohio State game was talked to death for three weeks before it happened. They certainly have a knack of latching on to stories and milking them for all they are worth.

But seriously, it is absurd how much coverage Barbaro has received over the past eight months. Maybe the people at ESPN forgot that he was a horse. Or maybe bookies were taking bets on whether he would recover or not. Isn't that why people watch horseracing in the first place? Call me insensitive, but I have a hard time sympathizing with any animal whose life plan is to compete for two years, retire, and then have sex with all of the finest lady horses in the land for the rest of his life. The true tragedy here is that Barbaro missed out on all that action.

To calm you PETA enthusiasts out there, I will say that I mean animals no ill will by writing this article. I love animals; I even ate some excellent peanut chicken less than 20 minutes ago. I had no problem with Barbaro himself. I had a problem with the journalists who felt the need to inform me of every little detail of his recovery. Bottom line, he was a horse. There are real people athletes who are struggling to come back from injuries that don't get more than a line on Sportscenter. There are family pets put down everyday but I don't read about them in the newspaper.

I guess by writing this article I have done exactly what I am complaining about ESPN doing. The difference is that I am not writing about Barbaro's medical progress, I am suggesting the legacy that he should leave in the field of sports reporting: Don't talk about the same story too much. And Barbaro, even though you recently passed, take solace in the fact that you still make the cut of the top ten things I care least about in sports, along with Terrell Owens, Stuart Scott's latest punch line, and anything that starts with an L and ends with acrosse.

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