Interesting. I remember thinking when I saw John Gosden explaining reassuringly “freakish, but it happens (painlessly?) all the time” as he tended to Rewilding, being put-down at Ascot in July, that race horses must have fragile cannon-bones. In fact not being interested in horses I had to look up cannon-bones on-line at the time. (Only interested because son-of-a-friend William Buick won the particular race on Gosden-trained Nathaniel.)
No-one wants to be watching the Derby, Kentucky Derby or Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 2018 and to see another horse fall, broken under its own weight and heritage.
To avoid such problems in thoroughbreds, and to maintain the genetic health of these most athletic of animals … the thoroughbred industry should periodically, every 5-10 years, re-check to see what the levels of inbreeding are.