4-year-old Kiss My Face is dead after breaking down in the 7th at Golden Gate yesterday. Once again, an apologist’s reaction is instructive. Golden Gate track announcer Michael Wrona tweeted out: “Sad to report the demise of Kiss my Face…” “Sad to report,” then on to other matters – next race, next round of excitement.
I’ve long held that people within the racing world – the jockeys, trainers, owners, sure, but also those, like Wrona, who make a living in and around the track – are desensitized to dead horses. It’s as if they have been conditioned, often from birth, to passively (and callously) accept a certain amount of collateral damage. Sick – and sad.
Also, in the most recent Los Alamitos minutes there was this on 3-year-old Sixarun Babe: “Immediately after the start [8th, January 15], while racing in the clear, Sixarun Babe fell. It appeared and was later confirmed the gelding had broken his back.”
This is horseracing.
Business as usual. Deep, and dark business that exploits racehorses for profit.
I speak from experience, and here’s what I found:
The industry supports the heartless trainers. In fact, they reward them with stalls, races, and wins.
The more heartless, and separated the trainers are, the more they will fill races, and that’s the main goal of most racetracks.
The more horses in the race, the more money is wagered, the higher the wagering pool.
The industry knows full well that in order to keep sore, and lame horses filling races, and running, the ongoing need for drugs is necessary.
When they eliminate race day drugs, this will effectively eliminate or reduce these type of trainers who are nothing more than drug pushers. It will probably eliminate or reduce breakdowns.
What it will do is have less horses available to fill races because many won’t pass pre-race vet checks without drugs covering-up the lameness.
It’s important to note that the extent of lameness varies from individual to individual.
However, horses running at high levels are putting out a lot, and are usually on a cocktail of drugs to keep them going as seen on the PETA video of Steve Asmussen’s barn.
This is horse racing.
Yes it is horse racing and it sickens me. Just short of a horse literally laying down and refusing to enter the gate, when is it going to end. I can tell you that it will never end here in Lexington Kentucky, The Horse Capital of the World. Way to much money involved and politics. It’s a sad situation. I know I wear “rose colored glasses” when it comes to horse racing. I’d like to think if we could get rid of the drugs, whips, and only sell so many breeding licenses each year so that the market would not be flooded with unwanted Thoroughbreds, which will allow for quality instead of quantity. ie Michigan sold deer hunting licenses allowing hunting deer but only so many doe permits were granted to control the population of the herds. (It’s against the law to kill a doe with no doe permit, you would pay a hefty fine and the chance of not being granted a license again) Licenses for breeding farms would be sold to allow each farm to only breed a certain amount of Thoroughbreds, guaranteeing quality. In a perfect world horse racing could be. But in this world we live in it should not be. It’s like the civil war in my heart, the battle within me. I have never placed a bet, been to the race track (because of the accidents) but I will watch the Kentucky Derby, and if that winner is running in the Preakness I will watch. If there is no possibility of a Triple Crown I do not watch the Belmont. I do get caught up in the excitement of a possible Triple Crown winner, I admit it. It’s six of one thing and a half dozen of another, the conflict I feel when it comes to Thoroughbreds. I also think that the Thoroughbred will disappear without racing and they are such beauties and grace. I know this post will prompt allot of backlash but it only reflects the conflict in my own heart and how I feel about horses. Please keep your thoughts to yourself after reading my post, I know that horse racing kills and it will continue to kill, unfortunately.
Thank you for listening.