Sport: Death in a Tent

The best horses in the East were running at fashionable, old-fashioned Saratoga and at streamlined Garden State, but turfmen’s thoughts strayed elsewhere. At Rockingham Park at Salem, N.H., under two circus tents, 43 emaciated thoroughbreds stood listlessly cooling their fevered noses in buckets of water. Their hind legs twitched; some fell. By last weekend, seven of them had died, or been destroyed, because of a swamp fever epizootic (animal equivalent of epidemic). The New Hampshire veterinary ordered every one of the 930 horses at Rockingham quarantined there indefinitely.

Swamp fever (or equine infectious anemia) was almost unknown in New England until last spring. It may have been brought in by an infected horse shipped from Florida. The infection had been spread presumably by blood-sucking insects. Cases began to pop up at various New England tracks, chiefly at Rockingham.

The disease attacks horses’ spleens, kidneys and livers. Veterinarians say there are likely to be relapses years after apparent recovery, and most trainers believe that it ends a horse’s racing career even if he survives. There is no known cure.

Some of the owners at Rockingham felt almost as sick as the sick horses. In many cases their feverish thoroughbreds were their entire working capital. A serious problem also faced the owners of healthy but quarantined horses. When the summer meeting at Rockingham ended last week, some 300 owners were left stranded — including scores of one-or two-horse owner-trainers who need purses to buy meat and potatoes. In an effort to give these horse-racing DPs a break, Rockingham Park got permission to open its fall meeting on Sept. 13, three weeks ahead of schedule.

At Saratoga, owners of fancier horse flesh, worth $5,000,000 or more, were nervous if not panicky. Some 25 horses which had been vanned in from New England in the past month were checked twice a day. At week’s end Saratoga closed without a case of swamp fever; but not until frost, said the vets, can horse owners in the northeastern U.S. breathe easily.