\"My question remains: If the winner did not collapse and die after the race, would NYT have given so many column inches to this story?\"
No, I don\'t think they would have given it any space whatsoever.
\"Was it the tragedy that made the story compelling?\"
As the noted literary critic Joesph Stalin pointed out, one death is a tragedy, one thousand is a statistic. While I find most horse racing stories compelling, I would say \"yes\", for a general audience, the hero dying makes for a compelling story.
\"Did the NYT editors subliminally hope that readers would make a connection (equine death) to the Drape pieces?\"
Nothing subliminal about it. Given the turnaround time (a Saturday afternoon race making it onto Tuesday\'s front page), I\'d say that Clancy did not have to pitch this story more than once.
But here\'s my beef. Isn\'t this the type of thing that some people here have been screaming for? What does this story say? S**t happens. You can take all the care in the world and people/horses still die. It\'s nobody\'s fault. A great horse\'s heart gave out. If this was how most race horses die, would we really have a scandal here? But the thing is, we KNOW this is not how most race horses die. If I was a horse, I\'d take my chances running three miles and jumping fences for Sheppard, rather than spending a minute in Baffert\'s barn.
