Through a FOIA request to the California Horse Racing Board, I have obtained the following information regarding racehorses killed at California tracks in 2019. Due to the volume, I will be posting incrementally.
Valencia Jqm, Sep 15, Los Alamitos R (euthanized Sep 20) – “catastrophic sacral fracture, extensive hemorrhages, muscle tearing; [subsequent] colic”
Yes, this horse was made to suffer for five days with a broken back.
Contratto, Sep 22, Los Alamitos R – “started to wig out at 5/10 pole, ran into outside rail and flipped over it – [at least eight] pelvic and vertebral fractures, rupture of pelvic diaphragm and rectus abdominis muscle”; “severe gastric ulceration”; “severe [ringworm] infestation”
“Started to wig out.”
pelvic and vertebral fractures
rupture of pelvic diaphragm and rectus abdominis muscle
severe gastric ulceration
severe [ringworm] infestation
Shes a Famous Royal, Oct 12, Los Alamitos R – “lethal fall due to lumbar fracture – broke neck and upper and lower jaw, skull fractures; severely comminuted vertebrae, multiple [bone] fragments within spinal canal accompanied by massive hemorrhage and complete transection of the spinal cord”
broke neck and upper and lower jaw
skull fractures
multiple [bone] fragments within spinal canal
massive hemorrhage
complete transection of the spinal cord
Emtech, Sep 28, Santa Anita R – “catastrophic fetlock failure – [multiple] fractures and ruptures with displacement of the cannon bone through the lacerated skin”
The pictures, for this one, say it all…
How can anyone do this to their horses and say they love them??? All of the people that do this to horses need to be held accountable and they should be charged with multiple counts of felony animal abuse and cruelty and TORTURE!!!!
They lie?
Exactly, Alan! They lie! How anyone can do this to horses and continue to do it over and over is an abomination. I know they don’t care and/or they love to be sadistic to horses and they get paid. Gary Stevens said some years ago that he gets paid to do what he loves to do; to ride horses. Since then, I have seen some undercover videos of Gary Stevens. Of course, some of the realities of the horrendous abuses in horseracing were revealed in those undercover videos. It’s absolutely appalling!!!! (…as I’m sure you know, Alan…)
Truly APPALLING!! Not that all the other injuries are not but to make a horse suffer for 5 days with a broken back?? To maim and destroy them to this extent??
These horrific “human” beings will pay for their sins in this life or the next. And there will be HELL to pay. The END for this demented, obscene industry just has to be very, very near!
Truly a house of horrors show! End this SIN.
Horse racing is not the great old sport it used to be. These horse are started way too young and pumped full of steroids to grow and run faster. They are made to run with injuries and treated with no respect at all. This is now a barbaric and cruel sport that NO ONE should support!
It hasn’t been a great old sport since families took their horses down to the commons on Sunday to race their neighbors for bragging rights. It’s been a horror show since pari-mutuel wagering became legal.
Amen,Alan…WELL SAID
Casino profits fueling high purse money plus paying up to last place has further exacerbated the suffering of racehorses.
Prior to Covid-19 horse racing had problems from a shortage of racehorses to owners and they were struggling to fill races while the abuse and dying of racehorses continued.
Add into the mix the decreased foal crops and they are getting smaller every year which will further ensure that racehorses will suffer, and be run much more frequently exacerbating pre-existing conditions that will probably increase the death rates as if it isn’t bad enough already.
There’s evidence of this all over tracks in America now and has been for some time.
Enter Covid-19.
This human catastrophe, as I think we’ve only just begun to see the damage it will do, will flip this business into an unmitigated disaster with the racehorses paying the price as if they aren’t already.
We do know, and the horse racing business has admitted, that the longer tracks stay shut down the quicker the demise of this business will occur.
There will be a multitude of factors that will finally end this public butcher show, but I never thought that it would be a deadly virus called Covid-19, which will expedite the shut down of the horse racing business increasing the volume of the unwanted racehorse mess.
I will be elated when tracks shut down, but will always be heartbroken over the plight of racehorses before and after Covid-19 because I know that this business won’t take care of them – they never have or have done so on a minimum basis for public relations reasons.
If you think this business isn’t ugly already it’s about to get much more uglier and it needs to be exposed every step of the way just like the broken exposed bones of a racehorse laying in the dirt dying.
The world needs a change and we will never be better without it. It’s time to realize that we live WITH the animals they don’t live for us. We use them abuse them constantly and it’s literally starting to kill our earth. Mother Earth won’t take it anymore, it’s time to make a change. Live the animals alone. Let them live in peace as you would like to. We don’t own them. They owe us nothing. We need to live as one.
Gina, I know this is too little too late but I hope that these sadistic barbarians at least gave VALENCIA some type of pain killer before they killed the horse. BAN HORSERACING BECAUSE THE BARBARIANS OF HORSERACING ARE NOT REFORMING; THEY WILL TORTURE HORSES UNTIL THEY, THE BARBARIANS, THEMSELVES ARE DEAD.
Wanda I think that the amount of pain killers required to alleviate a broken back in a racehorse would be an overdose especially when the horse was enduring this inhumane treatment for 5 days, but I get what your saying.
My only hope is that horse racing is banned because that’s the only way to stop this horrific, vile abuse and prevent the extreme suffering of racehorses such as VALENCIA.
Wanda, I know you feel the same.
We all can’t give up the fight, we must continue to be a voice for the racehorses and do what’s right.
Reblogged this on Armory of the Revolution.
Their lives matter just as much as yours.
Poor Emtech broke down and was euthed on the SECOND DAY of the Santa Anita Death Track’s highly-(self-)touted “comeback” meet. They had just finished convincing themselves, if nobody else, that their new, improved “Gold Standard of Safety” would “Transform Tradition,” or “Revitalize Reform,” or “Encourage Euthanization,” or whatever else their thrown-together Emergency Crisis Management PR Dream Team could come up with to try to save a very public, corporate tanking disaster known as the SADT.
Surprisingly, their slogans failed to prevent any more horses from dying at Santa Anita. They did, however, put an exclamation point on their pig-headed determination to continue running, regardless of how many horses they raced to death.
So, here’s to Emtech. May his memory always serve as a reminder of how and why horse racing was outlawed in California. And then, in the rest of the U.S..
Kelly, that is worth engraving on a memorial marker or something like that, you know what I mean!?! Here’s to EMTECH…
Wanda, maybe I’ll take this downtime to embroider it on a pillow…
Then again, it will take a California King-sized mattress to fit all the dead horses’ names that the SADT is responsible for. Better that we stick with your engraving idea, and put up them all up on a Wall of Shame in Arcadia.
Kelly, I think of the wall of names of Viet Nam veterans that were treated with disrespect and disgraced. I don’t know if a wall of that scale could be accomplished for all of the disrespected racehorses but that’s not for me to say. But, I think it would be appropriate as you have described it.
Gina just reading VALENCIA’S and EMTECH’S stories breaks my heart and makes my skin crawl at THE SHEER MONSTROSITIES. Absolutely UN-BE-LIE-VA-BLE. We are talking filthy rich people treating innocent, beautiful, majestic beings worse than garbage. Even through garbage you sift through. Yet, ZERO compassion for these young souls who gave everything for them. I wonder HOW and WHY THESE WRETCHED PARASITES are still walking the Earth.
Disgusting and heartbreaking
There’s a place in hell for those responsible for this poor horse’s death.
They have always said it’s natural for them. It might have been if they started them at 3 when their knees are locked. Then without drugs it might be natural. The walkers are on the same wave. They go for babies too
Heartbreaking