Horse dies after crossing the finish line in his first career race in tragic start to Preakness weekend

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There’s always a lot of excitement about the Preakness Stakes — the second leg of the Triple Crown — but this year’s weekend is off to a tragic start.

Laurel Park is hosting this year’s Preakness as Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore undergoes renovations, and on Friday, a horse collapsed and died after crossing the finish line in its first career race.

Hit Zero, trained by Brittany Russell, came into the race as the favorite. However, he finished last in the race, which was won by another one of Russell’s horses, Bold Fact — and upon crossing the finish line, Hit Zero reportedly began coughing, dropped to his knees, then put his head down and died.

“After pulling up and finishing the race, the horse was unsaddled, began walking back to the barn, and collapsed and ended up suffering catastrophic sudden death,” Chief Veterinary Officer for 1/ST Racing Dr. Dionne Benson told WBAL.

Dr. Benson said that an incident like this is often a sign of a heart condition, but they will not know for sure what happened until a necropsy is performed.

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This is obviously the last thing anyone wants to hear when it comes to horse racing, and it continues to be a major criticism of the sport.

However, Dr. Benson insisted that fatalities are still rare and there is a procedure in place to determine what happened and prevent future incidents.

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“Fatalities, first off, are very rare in horse racing overall. It’s less than 1% of 1% of horseracing. Realistically, it’s something that when a horse dies of a sudden death, every horse that dies in Maryland on a race track goes for a necropsy or post-mortem, and then, there is a meeting that follows that so we can work with the trainer to find out if there was anything abnormal about the horse, and, really, the goal is preventing any future fatalities,” Benson said.

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“But, often, it’s very difficult, especially with sudden death, to figure out what the cause is because, for example, if it’s an electrical abnormality, there’s no evidence of that in the heart after death.”

The Preakness Stakes is set to take place on Saturday.

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