Monzante, Part of the Family

This much should be clear: Horseracing people are involved in horseracing for money, fame, and glory. They race horses for themselves, not out of some sentimental attachment to equines. The opening sentence in Ray Paulick’s recap of the recently departed Monzante’s career says it all: “Just about everyone made money off Monzante….” Read his transaction history and a tragic truth emerges: Monzante was but an instrument in achieving human ends, a common slave.

In an interview with the Daily Racing Form, Monzante’s last owner, Jackie Thacker, said this when discussing the decision to euthanize, “Lord knows we loved that horse. He’d been good to me. It was like he was part of the family.” It is precisely comments like these that arouse such contempt for “The Sport of Kings.” Declarations of love, “part of the family”? I’m fairly certain that shooting up one’s child to mask pain while whip-forcing him to perform (Monzante was injected with the painkiller bute 36 hours before his last race) or selling him off when he becomes unproductive would provoke public indignation, not to mention criminal prosecution. Thacker went on to say, “I don’t know what I could have done. If I could have, I would have done it.”

You, Mr. Thacker, are a fraud; you didn’t care a whit about Monzante beyond his ability to earn for you. Had you the moral spine, you could have retired Monzante to the spacious grounds I’m sure you own. Better yet, you and your entire corrupt industry can, once and for all, stop exploiting a weaker species. Let them be.