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July 9, 2008 8:40:46 AM CDT

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Can Contrarian Owner Save Horse Racing?

Posted May 16, 08 2:54 PM CDT in Sports    Editor's Choice

(Newser) – Jess Jackson is on a mission. The owner of last year’s Preakness winner thinks that by breeding horses from sturdier stock, rather than the same old fashionable bloodlines, he can create stronger animals less likely to succumb to the kind of tragedy that took Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby. But taking on the entire horse racing establishment hasn't made Jackson popular. "Pretty much everyone in Kentucky hates him," said one critic.

“There are very few people who are willing to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes,” Jackson says. Of course, Jackson’s Preakness winner Curbin descends from Native Dancer, the ancestor behind the entire Kentucky Derby field. But he also keeps a big stable of international horses bred for longer races. Breeding them with American horses could, he thinks, produce a new dominant family.

Source Wall Street Journal

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Curlin's owner Jess Jackson, center, holds up the trophy accompanied by sheik Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, left, and Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum after winning the "Dubai World Cup" race.   (AP Photo/Nousha Salimi)
Jockey Robby Albarado rides Curlin to win the Breeders' Cup Classic horse race Saturday, Oct. 27, 2007 at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J.   (AP Photo/Rob Carr)
American Horse of the Year Curlin, center foreground, ridden by Robby Albarado, crosses the finish line to win the $6 million Dubai World Cup race.   (AP Photo)
Curlin, the 2007 Horse of the Year, peers out of his stall in Barn 37 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., Monday, April 28, 2008.   (AP Photo/Garry Jones)
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