Guest Post week | Horse Racing

Hiya,

Today we have another guest post from Vicky from The Curved Opinion.

Feel free to leave her your thoughts in the comments. 

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Imagine you were invited to join a sport where:

·Someone whipped you in order to make you go faster.
·It would be classed as nothing unusual for someone to die.
·Should you die/be badly injured, the event organisers, TV cameras and fans would think nothing of just merely covering up your body and carrying on the event around you.

Would you want to be part of that sport? I certainly wouldn’t. But yet, it is a sport. A very popular one where all those things do happen, on a frequency that is frankly terrifying. Horse racing.

Since the 13th March 2007 Animal Aid have been tracking the deaths of horses during racing and incredibly, there have been 1253 deaths since they started their record. To break that figure down, that is an average of 3 a week. That’s just in Britain alone. With horse racing all over the world that figure is in fact much higher.

In the past month alone, 15 horses have died or have needed to be destroyed. Here’s the link for you to see for yourself.

I think that that figure would qualify horse racing as the most dangerous sport in the world. For humans, no, but for horses, yet.

The jockey chooses to enter the sport. He trains with the horse, rides with the horse, chooses to enter an event with the horse. The horse? Well he just likes to run.

The horse can’t be briefed for the race ahead. He doesn’t know how many fences there are, how high they are, how many people and horses are going to be jostling around him for places. He doesn’t know the fact that if he falls, he will more than likely be destroyed because he is then "commercially non-viable". He will be what the BBC called “an obstacle” in the Grand National a couple of years ago. I call it a travesty.

The Grand National is one of the national's favourite past times. An institution where once a year people, most of whom are not even interested in horse racing, pick a horse and place a bet. Families sit together and watch, work colleagues create competitions; money is won and lost and then forgotten about.

This year I want to ask you a favour. Don't bet. Don't watch. You don't have to like horses, this is about animal welfare.

Can imagine the outrage if a similar sport was created for pugs? Where they were whipped to go faster and killed if they fell, all while being televised for the nation's entertainment? The place would be torn to shreds with people trying to save the dogs. So why it is acceptable for this to happen to horses?

Horse racing is a business. If people stop making the bets and boycott the events, a difference can be made. Let's make a difference.

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Thanks again Vicky!

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