This ritual has taken place each spring for more than 100 years, as predictable as the eventual coming of the black-eyed Susan - although the flower, which doesn't bloom until June, remains stubbornly on its own schedule.

As of this morning, 12 thoroughbreds are expected to make their way to the barn in preparation for the $1 million Preakness Stakes. Kentucky Bear, no doubt eager to get going, unloaded Wednesday and began light workouts on the Pimlico oval. A pair of New York-based colts will sleep in their stalls as long as possible, and Todd Pletcher, trainer of Behindatthebar, said his colt might not ship until the morning of the race.

However and whenever they arrive, the horses will be led to the starting gate late Saturday afternoon and will be asked to run 13/16 miles on a thick dirt surface in less than two minutes. In all probability, this is what they will do and, also in all probability, they would say, if asked and could respond, that they can't wait for the chance. Each of them was bred for just such a moment.

It's damn dangerous, though. They weigh 1,000 pounds and run on legs as delicate as those of a runway model. It takes nothing more than a misstep or a heel clipped against another horse or a small, undetected fissure that spreads into a fracture during the pounding of a race.

They are bred for speed, not endurance; for making a quick splash and then retiring to stud or brood. A generation ago, race horses were less fragile. They had more races in their careers, stayed in the public eye a little longer, but it was still dangerous.

It is another Triple Crown season, and the national conversation - such as it is for a sport well beyond its glory days - is all about the danger and little about the results. A horse named Big Brown pulled away to win the Kentucky Derby with a burst of late power that confirmed both his talent and the average abilities of the large field that chased him. Still, it was impressive, and the colt could well be the Triple Crown winner that horse racing has lacked for 30 years.

After Big Brown's showing at Churchill Downs, the owners of 17 of the 19 horses finishing behind him did not enter their horses in the Preakness.

Recapturetheglory, fifth in the Derby, was going to try but has been scratched because of illness. The other Derby starter, a wonderful dark-gray filly named Eight Belles, is dead.

She finished second to Big Brown and broke down while slowing from gallop to canter after the race was over, a happenstance so rare that track veterans could not recall having seen it before. Both front ankles fractured, perhaps at the same moment, perhaps like dominoes falling, no one knows. She was euthanized just minutes after going down, a dark coda to the festive blare that preceded the tragedy.

It is a horrible part of racing, particularly if you have seen it happen in person, the kind of thing that makes even hardened patrons turn their heads.

"These are our family. We live to take care of them, and they live to serve us," Larry Jones, the trainer of Eight Belles, said. "That's just our life. That's what we do. And it's very hard."

On the same day Eight Belles died, eight other race horses in the United States suffered injuries serious enough to warrant leaving the track by ambulance. It is the sport, and it is very hard to accept. By comparison, boxing has an excellent retirement program.

As a response to the Derby, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called for, among other things, a suspension of jockey Gabriel Saez, saying Eight Belles was "doubtlessly injured before the finish," with the implication that Saez urged her on despite this knowledge. Jones termed the charge "really and truly the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of."

Jockeys are not interested in dying. If they suspect the horse they are riding at 35 m.p.h. is about to suffer a calamity, tossing them to the ground and into the path of a stampede coming from behind, they will do everything possible to prevent that. Saez passed under the wire with a sound horse, as far as he knew, a happy, excited 3-year-old with her ears pricked forward and one of the best moments of her life just completed. Zealots can see it otherwise, of course, but their case is weakened when biased assumptions are substituted for fact.

Something should change, however, even if it is only the tight schedule dictated to the elite 3-year-olds, a dense packaging of the big races that makes hard training necessary leading up to them and, for the best ones, prescribes three distance races in the narrow space of five weeks. These are immature horses, not fully formed, and it is often too much to ask.

Perhaps the sport should mandate modern, artificial surfaces, although that isn't going to be a cure-all. Maybe more careful monitoring of the legs, looking for trouble before it happens. Maybe better policing of the pharmacology that keeps some of these horses running. Maybe all of that.

None of it happens this muted season, though, and racing is enduring its dark side once more as the horses return to the track where Barbaro was injured two years ago and another set of potential fans turned away.

Twelve of them will arrive by trailer and are expected to start the race Saturday. There is no guarantee how many will leave the way they came.

Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/bobford.