We can wail and gnash our teeth until the jackasses come home about PETA or Joe Drape or ESPN or whomever else is jumping on the overreaction bandwagon, but that "feel good" response will have nothing to do with addressing what is a major perception problem growing by the day. I have good friends who are neither racing fans nor animal rights zealots who now talk about this with thinly veiled inferences that this is a sport that should be put out to pasture.
This is a complex and multi-layered discussion with many technical aspects of medication well above my pay grade, so I'll step aside from that, but one general point is glaringly obvious. When the NFL has a problem, either with CTE's or with violence against women by players, there is a singular response. It doesn't resolve the problem (and one can easily make the case about proportionality of injury to humans vs. horses), but it changes the conversation. There are many obvious reasons in terms of overall popularity why the NFL has a decided advantage over the racing industry with its ability to keep criticism at bay, but horse racing's inability to present a coordinated response to this problem digs its grave even deeper.
