Oddly enough, I found this part of the article to be right on:
To call the horses a secondary attraction for many fans is to vastly overstate their importance. It may be cruel and impolite to say but, for many fans, the horses are only slightly more valued than a bumper in NASCAR and only moderately more than a keno ball or an ace of clubs.
The horses are nothing but the means by which all the drunken gambling is made both legal and socially acceptable.
I'd have not added the "drunken" part but I think the rest is correct. Maybe not when talking about people who are really fans of the sport, like most of us on these message boards. But go spend a day at the track, listen to the people talk about which horses they bet. It seems like 90% of the time, they have no idea what the horse's name is or anything about him. The horse is just a number. A means to make money.
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The real horses of the year (1986-2020)
Manila, Java Gold, Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Go for Wand, In Excess, Paseana, Kotashaan, Holy Bull, Cigar, Alphabet Soup, Formal Gold, Skip Away, Artax, Tiznow, Point Given, Azeri, Candy Ride, Smarty Jones, Ghostzapper, Invasor, Curlin, Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Goldikova, Havre de Grace, Wise Dan, Wise Dan, California Chrome, American Pharoah, Arrogate, Gun Runner, Accelerate, Maximum Security, Gamine
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