Somewhere in Italy, a broodmare seven months pregnant roams the paddocks. She is the only known mare in foal to George Washington, whose muddy carcass was winched aboard a horse ambulance after he was put down here on Saturday night.

From a European perspective, that broodmare represents the sole ray of hope from a soul-destroying Breeders' Cup renewal at Monmouth Park. In shocking weather, on a racing surface resembling a sandy beach at low tide, George Washington's right ankle splintered beyond repair just 100 yards from the winning post.

So it was that a horse of immense charisma, and talent to match, met his maker some 4,000 miles from home. Aidan O'Brien, his trainer, took one look at the stricken horse before sanctioning the inevitable. He then collected his distraught wife, Anne-Marie, and their four children before leaving the track in tears.

They departed a scene of bedlam. John Magnier's inscrutable features contorted with anguish as he sought to fortify friends and family against the loss. His wife Susan, who had taken great care in naming the horse, was inconsolable. This was what George Washington meant to the people around him. He was the equine embodiment of Jack-the-lad. And now he was gone.

It was a night of inquests all round. The penultimate one was under way as soon as George Washington became detached from the field halfway through the Classic. What went wrong with a European challenge that failed to win a race for the first time in nine years?

Yet that was instantly superceded by the sight of George Washington thrashing around like a beached whale. The most appalling conditions imaginable begged the safety question; the simple answer is that George was the sole fatality in an event that often verges on the attritional. Twelve months ago, under cloudless skies at Churchill Downs, two fillies were killed in one race. And any sighting of Lester Piggott is accompanied by bone-shuddering recollections of his crashing fall from Mr Brooks on the Florida dirt in 1992.

There was resonance in the words of Dr C Wayne McIlwraith, the on-site veterinarian at Monmouth. In acknowledging concerns over the state of the surface, he added: “It is also possible, since [George Washington] had raced primarily on turf, that ... he might not have been landing [his feet] as smoothly as a horse more experienced over the surface.”

However, to suggest that Magnier and his partners would have indulged any strand of risk over and beyond that associated with racing horses is to overlook what George Washington meant to them. They doted on him. Besides, the common theme with all these fatalities is the unforgiving dirt surface - irrespective of its condition.

American racing is in heated debate over the merits of uprooting traditional dirt tracks in favour of synthetic surfaces, such as Polytrack, on which casualty rates decline. Next year's Breeders' Cup is bound for the synthetic racing surface at Santa Anita, California.

A fatality-free renewal would surely represent the last rites for traditional dirt. The Breeders' Cup, already creaking from international competition, can ill afford another scene that saw Curlin's connections celebrate their triumph while George Washington lay prostrate in the shadows.

Earlier O'Brien had lamented the dismal showing of Dylan Thomas, whose Turf bid subsided on saturated grass as English Channel galloped to victory. And he was entitled to believe that Excellent Art might have won the Mile, rather than finish a close second to Kip Deville, had he not been drawn wide in stall 13. Never will O'Brien have been so pleased to return home.