Eight Belles sustained a condylar fracture on one front leg and a sesamoid fracture on the other front leg. There is NO WAY on God’s green earth that this double injury could have been treated successfully in an equine - money or no money. Horses hold 60-70% of their body weight on their front feet, and even with body slinging, there is no way this filly could have recovered. Equine surgery & anesthesia is fraught with problems not seen in other animals or even man, and when the legs & hooves are involved, it’s 10X worse, usually from complications post-op (i.e. Barbaro).
Eight Belles would never have been born if there was no thoroughbred racing; she had a great life while it lasted. All sports - hell, life itself - is risky. If you got rid of everything that had inherent risk, there would be very little left.

PS - If they could have saved her, she would have generated big money as a broodmare. So, saying that they withheld medical intervention because she would “now generate zero revenue” is false.

Cop out. Big deal, humans have 100% of their body weight on two feet. Sure they could have saved her, but lets face it money talks. I’ve seen many injured horses recover with surgery… usually only for highly prized studs who are worth keeping around for making offspring. If they wanted to save that dumb animal, they could have, instead of killing her no more than 10 minutes after the race finished.

If you support breeding animals for the purpose of gambling, good for you!

I guess greyhound racing and cock fights are well worth supporting too right?

You might have seen “many horses injured recover with surgery” - but not a horse with THESE injuries.
When it comes to injuries/surgeries of the leg, there are zero comparisons that can be drawn between a human and a horse. Humans do not weigh 1000-2000 lbs, and do not have hooves - and well, they just are not horses.
A friend of mine blogged it perfectly:
“Because a horse that can’t put weight on one leg is at high risk for developing laminitis (a painful and debilitating disease of the hoof). Laminitis is ultimately why they had to euthanize Barbaro - his bones were healing.

A horse that can’t put weight on EITHER of her front legs is not only in incredible amounts of pain, the chances of recovery are so slight that it’s more humane to euthanize than to force her to endure months of “recovery” from not only the broken ankles, but also the laminitis which is highly likely to develop in her hind feet as a result.

The way a horse is built, they need to be able to bear weight on their feet. It is part of the way their circulatory system is built - they need the pressure on their feet in order to get blood return back up their legs. A horse who can’t put weight on its feet is a horse who is going to end up with necrotizing tissue in his feet, inflammation, laminitis, severe pain, the toe bone sinking out through the sole of the foot, and ultimately death.

Horses are not built like dogs or cats or humans. They can’t lie down for long periods of time. They can’t stay off their feet for long periods of time. Their anatomy and physiology DEMANDS that they bear weight on all four legs, and at a relatively even pressure across all four of them. You take that ability away - by breaking two of the four legs - and you condemn the horse to a slow, painful, hobbling death. Unless you do the humane thing and euthanize it.”

So there it is.
Also, like I said - if Eight Belles could have been saved, she would have made mucho $$ as a broodmare. So even if someone like you thinks it’s all about the money, it still makes no sense that they would put her down if they didn’t have to.
Opinions should be informed by facts, or else they are rendered null and void.

Another excellent entry from someone who knows:
They sometimes can, and considering the incalculable value of Eight Belles as a brood mare (after being only about the third girl to win the Derby in 134 years), no doubt the owners would have spent anything to save her if it was humanely possible.

Many broken bones in horses can be repaired, at least enough for the horse to live a long, happy life. I have horse who broke a cannon bone, it was fixed nicely, and that was over twenty years ago. Horses have even been fitted with artificial legs.

However, with TWO ankles involved, and one of them being a particularly nasty compound fracture with the skin broken, the dirt in that wound almost guarantees an infection, which makes treatment immensely more difficult, painful, and far less likely to succeed.

A really mercenary owner, thinking only of profits, might have opted to try some heroic veterinary adventure that would have been extremely hard on the horse — and probably would have only prolonged her pain.

Putting her down was unavoidable, and the only right thing to do in this case.