Equestrian World lost a real Champion today. RIP Hickstead
 

Happened shortly after completing a course in Italy in front thousands of people.

Caution, very heartbreaking video especially for the animal lovers like me.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?slug=ycn-10375201

Poor Hickstead..RIP :(

As big as they are, Horses are quite fragile animals. Will be interesting to see what the autopsy reveals.

I'm guessing heart exploded. That was a beautiful horse.

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what makes their hearts explode if i may ask? they give em drugs?

"The horse is a natural blood doper," Karyn Malinowski, the director of the Equine Science Center at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told the New York Times. "When the horse does an athletic event, it will automatically dump tons of red blood cells into the bloodstream. It's what makes the horse a fabulous athlete. And at the same time, because you have an increase, the blood does become thicker, and if the horse was prone to a weakened heart, it could have burst."

The stronger the horse, the more fragile he or she is. A stallion's legs don't grow to match its enormous girth, which makes every race and every leap a miracle and a risk. Whether it's Ruffian, Barbaro or Hickstead, the most unforgettable horses in history are made legendary because they ran to their limits, and couldn't run past them.

Edit: What made Secretariat so dominating was discovered when an autopsy was preformed. His heart was 3 times the normal size and could pump all that thickened blood faster.
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