It is true, of course, that most trainers, assistant trainers, jockeys, drivers, caretakers, and veterinarians care a great deal about their horses and would never intentionally harm them. But so what? How many abused horses is too many? Saying that there are exceptions to the rule of decent horse care is no answer to PETA or to the Times. The real story here is not that Steve Asmussen may be an outlier. It is that so many in the sport know that he is not. The story is not that this news is a surprise but that it took so long to emerge. You can blame PETA—you can always blame PETA—but for what, exactly?

The alleged behavior goes on, decade after decade, because the industry is unwilling to police itself. Because state regulators are feckless and because there is no uniformity among racing jurisdictions. Because the people who develop performance-enhancing drugs are almost always one step ahead of the officials developing tests for those drugs. Because veterinarians give their horses too many drugs too often. And because too many still within the sport equate real reform with a bad-for-marketing acknowledgement of how bad things are. Well, guess what. We are here. There is no longer a man behind a curtain.

Now the traditionalists—and by that I mean the well-meaning folks who have brought horse racing in America to the precipice of collapse—are mortified to know that this story will have legs (sorry) through the Triple Crown season. This is so because PETA didn't just drop the video on the world: Its officials also brought litigation, in both federal and state court, and that in turn has aroused from their perpetual torpor racing regulators in New York and Kentucky. The story of thoroughbred racing in 2014 will forever be linked the story from PETA and the Times. It's up to the industry to make something good from that.

The Finish Line

How about telling the truth? It can finally set this industry free. Instead of pretending this problem of abuse does not exist, or claiming that the problem is under control, the sport can take the bold leap it will need to take to get to the other side—the side where animal activists aren't picketing racetracks. That will mean more money for enhanced drug tests. It will mean legislative efforts to better regulate trainers and veterinarians. It will mean swifter and stricter punishment for offenders. It will mean an end to the insider's code of silence.

"If you see something, say something" ought to be horse racing's newest rule. Wouldn't that help? Everyone in horse racing, at least everyone I know or know of, already pretty much knows what's on the tape. Anyone who has ever spent time in a shed row or on a backstretch knows that this sort of stuff goes on, in some barns but not others, by some trainers and not others, in the shadows of the sport. That it was allegedly this trainer, at these tracks, was great marketing by PETA. But that doesn't mean the story isn't real or that it can easily be dismissed.