Is Horse Racing Just Another Way Humans Abuse Their Rights over Animals?
Horse racing is a topic with half of the industry hidden in the shadows. In plain sight, it looks like the horses are treated well; they are kept in mostly lovely stables. But when digging a little deeper pain and suffering come to light. The thing is these poor animals are killed regularly in this devastating sport. When uncovering the dark side of this sport it just becomes plain and simple, it’s cruel. Same with all animal racing, including greyhounds. Horse’s are interesting grand creatures. They enjoy simple activities such as eating, playing and sleeping. Most horses enjoy galloping across fields, but when it comes down to horse racing it’s pretty much the same but that’s because they don’t know the true dangers of it. Horses are incredibly willing animals like dogs, when they earn your trust they will do almost anything for you even if it leads them to injury.
What is horse racing?
Horse racing is a sport where horses are ridden by jockeys and are then put to race against each other. Depending on what place you come to you will get a lot of money. Horse racing is a big industry that is built upon a thing called betting. What happens is that people place money on horses and if that horse wins they get lots of money. Betting keeps the industry thriving because it gives the industry so much money.
I’m not trying to say that horse racing needs to be necessarily banned, it just needs to change. When I mean change it has to be safer. 500 horses died on the racetrack in the U.S in 2018 and these numbers happen every year. For a safer race, there should be few horses per race. This would then hopefully mean few build-ups and crashes. Having no horse jumps/obstacles needs to also be taken into account. Horse’s aren’t meant to carry 108 to 118 pounds of weight on their back while flat out galloping over massive jumps. Horses jumping at such speed makes the whole thing extremely dangerous. At the start of each race, the horses mostly clear the jumps, but at the end, these horses are throwing themselves over these bushes. This is because they get so tired; this then leads to most of the injuries happening at the end of each race. Finally, whips also need to be banned. They aren’t being used correctly in this sport and cause the horse unnecessary pain. In this analysis, I will be going over the two main points of horse racing; the dark side of horse racing and the bad use of whips by jockeys. The main question is why is horse racing still a popular sport considering how dangerous it is?
Horse’s Forced to Run
People stand by watching 1,000-pound beasts flat out gallop carrying riders smacking them with tools to make them go even faster. Most of these horses are treated like royalty but in the end, death is just a hoofbeat away. If a human breaks a leg, they just put a cast on, if a horse breaks a leg it’s a whole other story. Horse’s rarely live with 3 legs and it seems injury on track is so common for these poor horses that many are euthanized. Their life ends with pain, terror, fear as many horses end up having devastating falls.
Not only do some of these horses die from injury on track, but many are sent to slaughter for meat. We can’t just allow these horses to be cheered on one minute and then the next end up in dog food or in our burgers. It’s actually not legal to eat horses in most countries such as the U.S so they have to ship the meat out to countries like Belgium and China because there it is. (Washington Post)
Whips
When whips are brought into the equation, horses end up with more injury. The purpose of whips in horse racing is to make the horse run faster in the last 100 meters when they are tired. Most of the time whips don’t benefit the horse or the jockey, and the negatives outweigh the positives. (RSPCA)
The dislike of whips has been around for a very long time, but thankfully on February 19th, 1966, a 52-year old former jockey named Walter Hoysted came to protest against the use of whips. He walked into the middle of the race track with a double-barrelled shotgun and said that he would shoot if he saw jockey’s whipping the horses. Most people seem to understand the cruelty of this sport, but sadly, that’s not enough to make a change.
Is it cruel?
There are two main sides to this issue. Some think that the horse racing industry isn’t cruel. Commons ideas are that they aren’t forced to run and they’re kept in great conditions.
Some people believe horse racing isn’t cruel as there are many observations for this such as “their ears are pricked forward.” This piece of evidence is something that you can’t use to justify horse racing. A horse’s ears could be forward if they are spooked, or just paying attention to what’s in front of them. When I observed a horse race I saw that most of the horses had their ears back anyway. This information isn’t enough to tell the happiness or the cruelty of their situation.
“As stubborn animals, horses won’t run unless they want to do so.” If you had a strong rider on top of you hitting you, you would run. Also, these horses have been trained their whole lives to do this. These animals didn’t sign up for this, they don’t know the consequences and the dangers of this sport.
This article also says that horse racing industries take many measures to keep horses and jockeys safe. That is absolute nonsense. If proper measures were put in place, it wouldn’t be common for injury of both horses and jockey. Saying that there are measures put in place when thousands of horse’s die on track from traumatic deaths isn’t ok. The odds aren’t in their favour when 1 in every 1,000 horses starts, which leads to death. This number doesn’t even include the injury. “Racing exposes horses to a significant risk of injury and sometimes, catastrophic injury and death through trauma (e.g. broken neck) or emergency euthanasia” (world animal protection). In 2018 in America, 10 horses died on track each week, and 700 to 800 died total in a year. (Peta). For these reasons, horse racing is the most dangerous equestrian discipline. When participating in horse racing it’s not a matter of if you’ll get hurt it’s a matter of how bad and when.
Are padded whips better?
Normal whips aren’t being used as much as padded whips in horse racing anymore. Padded whips are supposed to provide a cushioning effect. The problem with this is some of the non-padded parts of the whips end up hitting the horse sometimes. Padded whips also can cause localized trauma and tissue damage. Lots of the time, the whip hits the abdomen or the flank. This happens 75% per cent of the time but is “unacceptable” according to the International Agreement on Breeding, Racing and Wagering. This type of whip is hit with such force that it causes the horse still a lot of pain. It is hard to tell how hard and where the horses are being hit in sport as it is very fast-paced as the average speed is 40 miles per hour.
An experiment done by Paul McGreevy to prove how much it hurts for a horse to be hit by a padded whip shows that it does actually hurt a horse. Paul stated at the end “So did it cause me pain and distress? Well, the answer is a resounding yes.” What I saw in the footage was an instant muscle reflex or in other words, the whole leg moved after being struck. The part of the leg which was hit was also red. The thermographic footage also showed inflamed tissue. Horses do have a very similar thickness of skin to humans they just also have a layer of fur but, to think that this happens to horses every race, and they get hit multiple times (7 times in flat racing) is astounding. Whips cause the horse the same amount of pain as they would for us, yet we are still doing it. Why is that?
Animal Abuse Sports
In the 21st century, animal abuse or animal suffering is sort of normalized in sports or events. Looking back to the 1880s there were horses forced to jump off diving boards for crowds who had to pay money. This act is now seen as incredibly harsh and dangerous. What would happen is people would get the horse to go up to a 60-foot platform and then jump off into the water while riding the horse. Many riders and horses die in the doing of this act. The difference between the cruelty of humans and horses is the horses were forced into this the humans weren’t. Horse diving shut down in the 1990s but it may shut down in the 1970s from lack of crowds and pressure from animal rights activists.
Other events where animals suffer are circuses, bullfighting, fox hunting, bear shows and all animal racing. Greyhound racing is another type of racing but with a breed of dogs. These dogs are so overbred that many are euthanized. Over 12 years between 48,000 and 68,000 dogs were killed because they were “too slow to pay their way or were unsuitable for racing” (the conversation). I believe zero unnecessary euthanasia should be tolerated when it comes to both horses and dogs in the racing industry. This world is so twisted that horses race for humans so that people can get richer till they eventually retire, just become meat for greyhounds, who also race and then get euthanized.
Now and Then
Today, the world is a very different place than it was 20 years ago or even 5 years ago. Taking a horse to war and having it die gruesome ghastly deaths, was a thing that had to be done 100 years ago. But times are different now. We can’t change everyone’s relationships with animals but, we can protest against large industries/sports publicising animals being treated incorrectly. Animals can’t speak out for themselves but, that doesn’t mean they don’t feel emotions or pain. People abuse animals on an everyday basis. Dogs are left homeless on the sides of streets, all the way to the big lick: a tall shoe designed for horses strapped onto their legs with chains causing them lots of pain. I use a whip on my horse because she is very stubborn and doesn’t move sometimes but, I never hit it so hard that it would hurt me. Horse racing is just another way humans abuse their rights over animals. Horse racing is dangerous and cruel and needs to be stopped. Whips in horse racing just cause the horse more pain and don’t make it any safer. Why is horse racing not banned yet?