Imagine a world without horseracing. Imagine the racehorse as extinct. No whips, no dope, no snapped sesamoids, no slashed carotids, and…no stables (where, as an aside, horses are kept penned and isolated for the vast majority of their day). If, then this would never have happened. Yes, horseracing, the blaze that engulfed and destroyed 19 beautiful, helpless innocents at a barn (sans sprinkler system, of course) near Louisiana Downs Thursday afternoon is on you.
So regardless of what investigators find, it’s really as if those 19 horses died while racing or in a slaughterhouse. They needn’t have been there. They shouldn’t have been there. Imagine the sheer terror those trapped – literally and figuratively – horses must have felt. What happened at River Point Stables is tragic, but the greater tragedy is the industry that made it possible.
