The sound track to this Twitter video is inappropriate which gives it a sick quality. Perhaps that is why it was added. To juxtapose the horror visuals and the music. Personally, I’d ban horse racing full-stop. Of course, it won’t happen as there are too many people who enjoy throwing money at the ‘sport’. They love their betting. And it is about betting. It is using horses as a means to allow people to bet. There will be counterarguments from horse racing aficionados. I get that. But at heart it is hard to deny that horse racing is about betting and it inherently at least slightly abusive of the animals.
Gambling itself is a mugs game. Anyone who gets involved in gambling has made a big mistake. The only winners are the gambling companies, fleecing the mugs who are addicted to it.
The words below accompanied the video above. I am not sure who wrote them. But they dislike horse racing as much as me.
“They didn’t want to die. All so people can have a silly bet on the horse racing and simple-minded people needed a bit of entertainment. This is an almost daily occurrence in the UK, sometimes, several times a day, how is this acceptable? In desperation of their failing…”
So, what about horse racing? I have some pages on racing. Here are three. The general tone that comes across is that there is abuse in horse racing. The people involved in it use horses as assets. It is hard for them to treat horses as sentient beings. This is a business. Businesses are not very good at animal welfare as it gets in the way of profit.
Racehorse develops nosebleed (epistaxis) on scorching day at Ascot
Distinguished racehorses killed inhumanely and sometimes in front of other horses at abattoir
Ted Walsh called a horse that refused a jump a “dirty rotten cowardly so and so”
Horses naturally don’t have to run as fast as they are forced to run during a race. In the wild they run at a more natural pace. The whip is used to give the impression to the horse that they are being chased by a predator and that predator is about to bite them and knock them down.
Do horses understand that they are racing and that they won a race when that happens? The experts say that they do not understand this. Although you will see alternative points of view.
Hag Ridden
There is a phrase “hag-ridden”. In earlier times it was believed superstitiously that overnight horses in stables had fallen prey to the attentions of witches. It was believed that they entered the stables and stolen the horses to ride them away to secret meetings.
Thet rode them so fast and furiously that they exhausted them. When they returned to the stalls they were covered in sweat and breathless.
The real reason is less prosaic and indicative of horse abuse. Early stables back in the day were often poorly designed. Health was subjugated to the horse’s security and the compartments for the horses were often designed without windows.
They were shut in, in stagnant air with a serious lack of oxygen. The horses were found in the morning to be drained of energy and sweating. The problem wasn’t about witches but about stupid stable hands.
On 6 May 2023, the Daily Mail reported that seven horses died at Churchill Downs hours before the Kentucky Derby.
They add that two horses died on Kentucky Derby day at Churchill Downs taking the number of fatalities on the track to 7 before the $3 million race.
A 3-year-old gelding Chloe’s Dream was hurt in the second race last Saturday. The horse was taken in an ambulance with a knee injury and was then euthanised. The trainer said that he took a bad step on the track. He said they could do the same thing running in a field so this was just unfortunate.
Another horse, Freezing Point, a three-year-old colt was euthanised after pulling up in the Pat Day Mile Stakes.
Just some examples bumped into on the Internet very quickly without any effort. There’s just too many horses dying on racetracks and you simply can’t justify horse racing when it is all about betting which in itself is very damaging to the mental health and pocket of millions of people.
