What happens to horses after racing days are over? A lucky few escape a sad end. | Strange

GEORGETOWN, Ky. – On a recent April morning, the old white horse leaned his head over the fence and scarfed the carrot chunks from my extended hand.

I’d had to wait for a TV crew to finish a fence-side session. After my turn, a half dozen other hands offered carrots. The old horse gobbled them all.

The golden years are good for Silver Charm.

We’d met before, outside Barn 33 at Churchill Downs in Louisville. That was another spring morning in 1997. A couple days later, Silver Charm won the Kentucky Derby and entered Thoroughbred racing immortality.

Now, at age 30, he is the star at Old Friends’ Dream Chase Farm for retired racehorses in bluegrass country.

If you watch the Kentucky Derby this weekend, you’ll see 3-year-old Thoroughbreds at the peak of their form, majestic and powerful. Sometimes, their later years aren’t so majestic.

Once done racing, a Thoroughbred can extend his or her value years in the breeding shed. When that’s finished, a horse switches from the asset column to the debit column. Racing and breeding are a business just like making automobiles or pizzas. There is a bottom line.

The tragic fact is that thousands of racehorses, no longer earning their keep, go to the slaughterhouse every year.

However, it’s not as bad as it used to be, thanks to Old Friends and other similar horse-rescue agencies.

A horse good enough to win a race like the Kentucky Derby should be assured a graceful retirement. But there are exceptions.

One was Ferdinand, winner of the 1986 Kentucky Derby. Ferdinand in his later years stood at stud in Japan. In 2002, evidence emerged that the stallion ended up in a slaughterhouse.

The outcry rocked the Thoroughbred industry. A law was eventually passed banning horse slaughter in the U.S. Still, thousands of racehorses are shipped out of country to be processed into pet or human food.

In 2004, a Boston journalist named Michael Blowen started the nonprofit Old Friends. Over two farms in Kentucky and another in New York, Old Friends provides a dignified retirement for 275 former racehorses.

Another agency, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation hosts hundreds of horses over 15 farms. The Unbridled Sanctuary, named for the 1990 Derby winner, hosts retirees in New York.

Old Friends’ Dream Chase Farm is open to visitors – via online reservations. I recommend it.

The News Sentinel sent me to cover the Kentucky Derby 19 times, including Silver Charm’s triumph in 1997. But he isn’t the first Derby champ I dropped in on in retirement.

In 1985, I stopped by Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, and was thrilled to have my photo taken with the great Secretariat. He was still gorgeous at age 15.

Silver Charm is still handsome and gregarious. After the Derby, he won the Preakness Stakes and was favored to complete racing’s first Triple Crown in 19 years by winning the Belmont Stakes.

It didn’t happen. Today, if Silver Charm looks about 100 yards to another fenced pasture he can see Touch Gold, the horse that beat him in that ’97 Belmont.

Another spoiler resides with Old Friends. In 2004, people’s choice Smarty Jones was favored to win the Belmont and complete the Triple Crown. Birdstone sprang the upset at 36-1 odds. Today, you can feed carrots to 22-year-old Birdstone at Old Friends.

A recent arrival, I’ll Have Another, won the 2012 Derby. Two other Derby winners, War Emblem and Charismatic, rest in Old Friends’ cemetery.

I’ll enjoy watching the Run for the Roses this weekend. And I’ll hope every one of the horses has a comfy retirement in their future.

Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Kentucky Derby-winning horses escape a sad end at Old Friends rescue