While Santa Anita cynically pushes local health officials to allow it to reopen on “humanitarian” grounds (desperate backstretch workers), the track has killed yet another (11th on year) horse. Yesterday, M C Hamster was felled in a morning “workout” – “fracture[d] ankle…unrecoverable…euthanized.” She was four.
This is horseracing.
M C Hamster another victim of this vile business and the vile people in it.
The Covid-19 crisis brings out the best and the worse in people.
Horse racing was the worse before this crisis, but this crisis exacerbates the deepest evil in the human spirit.
I peruse the comments of apologists on pro-horse racing sites and they are repulsive, beyond any sort of rational explanation.
We are in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, no doubt, and everybody is suffering.
Every single business, person on this planet is being affected in one form or another.
While most businesses are doing their part the horse racing industry complains and whines that it can’t continue.
They only care about their stupid $2 bets under the guise of caring for the stable workers and racehorses.
They’ve never cared and here’s proof.
This vile business has been collecting billions in wagering profits for years now plus they’ve been getting taxpayers handouts plus casino profits – all of which should be going to our communities.
Nevertheless, these idiopathic, self-centered, racehorse parasites and killers are hell bent on continuing what should never be in the first place.
The Stronach Group, under the former now defunct Magna Entertainment, made legal contracts with the California government to upgrade and modernize the stable area at Santa Anita and their other properties.
In exchange, the California government made huge concessions to the horse racing business including property tax deterrence, relaxed environmental regulations and many of the state agencies responsible for enforcing these legal contracts were lax about violations – all the paperwork is on file.
TSG did the same thing in Maryland and Florida where they own tracks.
Simply put, they have never lived up to their end of the bargain while continuing to convince politicians that they need hundreds of millions of dollars more to keep this sham going.
While collecting millions they never ensured a decent living space for backstretch workers and many of them have children in the stable area.
Hardly any of these workers have any sort of benefits or minimal at best.
When they get hurt? – bye.
So many more examples, but to watch human beings live in dilapidated squalor while collecting billions FOR YEARS is no excuse whatsoever and clearly shows an industry who doesn’t care about them.
While Frank Stronach flew in his private jet all over the place buying a 30 million dollar Pegasus statute to adorn Gulstream Park (all of this right after he got his Bankruptcy declaration that exonerated him from fiscal responsibility to hundreds of small contractors and stable area workers who bought stock in Magna) the stable workers were living in rooms with bugs, rats, sewage seepage and God knows what else?
Then the racehorses.
Well in one word: horseracingwrongs.
The countless, endless recounts by Joy Aten, Mary Johnson of starving, neglected racehorses found in various locations, kill auctions etc, that were deliberately dumped by people who claim to “love them like family members,” and then these delusional monsters, devoid of any compassion, doesn’t “thank” them, doesn’t send any money, in fact, defends what’s obvious to normal people as a horse that the industry isn’t responsible for.
It’s so vile, so incredulous what these apologists actually come up with and this crisis has exemplified how horrific this business is because even in the middle of a pandemic they are still KILLING racehorses.
This business only suddenly cares about the stable workers and racehorses when they can’t exploit them.
When will the racehorses, stable workers, taxpayers, communities – get their justice and finally get rid of this cancer on our society?
Well said!
Any lame excuse to keep the racing and wagering going will do as far as The Stronach Group is concerned. Who cares about the squalor that the stable area workers are doomed to “live” in? Certainly not The Stronach Group. Let’s just keep that gravy train coming. Who cares where taxpayers’ money is going? Well, it would appear that the elected officials in California or any state don’t much care where the money goes as long as their own pockets are lined… Yes, it is absolutely discouraging!!!!
sadly I think the fear of preventing horseracing would be the lack of care of the horses. If they are not racing they are not making money…thus worthless. They would go without food, without care and probably most would be sold to slaughter to squeeze a few remaining dollars out of them. they are considered commodities by the industry with no value other than to make a buck.
Horse racing has got to be put out of business. All of the cruel deaths of beautiful horses for what? So that asshole gamblers with no heart can wager? So Stronbach and horse race owners can continue to rake in millions? What kind of cruel profiteers are these???
Why are they racing? STOP KILLING HORSES!
There is no compassion for these animals! I own horses, many are from Penn National and they are so scared for the first month until they learn love and softness. They are my beloved family members for life, and wonderfull! The Gates of Hell open and will be waiting for these vile humans .
God bless you Sarah,for being a genuine REAL life hero for these gentle innocent souls. It’s so sad that so many of these tortured animals need RESCUING. If horse racing didn’t exist…there would be no “problems”, the evil cretans brought this holocaust on themselves by forced over breeding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stop killing horses. Owners are only concerned with money and not with the health and welfare of the horses. Horse racing is a cruel sport. Shame on the owners and anyone connected with racing.
This is totally unacceptable. There was no need to open a RACE TRACK….REALLY That is ridiculous. This track has been totally irresponsible to the workers and especially the horses. CLOSE IT DOWN!
The comments on Horseracing Wrongs from the supporters are always unfailingly brilliant, incisive and intelligent, but the ones today are some of the best comments ever.
I don’t know what it will take to shut this monstrous, grotesque pathetic excuse for a “business” down, but its demise is demanded. I suspect that they are desperate to keep their money source open even with this virus because if they DO shut it down now, it will never re-open. And they KNOW it.
It’s funny how now that this Pandemic has brought everything to it’s knees…we don’t hear the standard bullshit “we love them like family”, now it’s “we’ve gotta get back to racing,these horses aren’t making us any money, and they are a burden”. What bullshit phonies.
Poor MC Hamster was trucked from Turf Pairo’deaths to the Santa Anita Death Track with the futile hope that she could make money for her racing creeps in the age of COVID-19. Instead, she became just another of the thousands of reason to shut down the SADT. The jobs of track workers were on very thin ice well before this pandemic; to believe that all these backstretch workers could have come out of this unscathed is absolute, pig-headed denial. Racehorse owners and the tracks need to pay these people, and to help them phase into new work and housing. Instead, they’re railing against animal advocates, health officials, and the media for “taking away their jobs.” Pathetic, as usual.
There is nothing “humane” about San An!
And I wonder if those people working at Santa Anita are keeping a safe distance? We exploit animals for our own gain. Thats how this pandemic started, selling live animals in markets in China. The pictures of the animals in the cages: dogs, cats, wild animals is so heartbreaking. And then for man’s pleasure we kill beautiful horses.
Governor Newsom, please stop this abuse now!
So another plea by The Stronach Group CEO Belinda Stronach – daughter of Frank Stronach yesterday.
She has submitted an open letter to the L.A. Times and published on The Blood Horse.
She uses the term “ecosystem” to describe the wonderful world of horse racing with the dedicated workers.
Laughable since the widespread pain, suffering, abuse, and dying of racehorses is anything but an “ecosystem.”
The Stronach Group’s business model is the exploitation of non-consenting beings and consenting cheap labor to churn billion dollar profits for their own gain.
Neither the racehorses nor the stable workers have ever shared in such obscene profits as the racehorses continue to die either on the track or on the slaughterhouse floor and the labor lives in deplorable conditions.
Ms. Stronach deliberately and opportunistically uses a humanitarian crisis to exploit people’s love for animals and concern for low paid workers to line her own pockets and those of her company.
They have never cared or they would have been taking care of the “backbone” of their business long before this crisis shut down their doors.
These parasites need to be shut down for good and I dread the day that Santa Anita reopens because not even an pandemic prevents racehorses from dying.
Using the word “ecosystem” is nauseating to me!!!! I know what you mean by laughable, Gina, but this whole horse-killing thing is way too disturbing to me for me to laugh about it. It’s a ploy to create an image of something that is natural. The act of forcing young, underdeveloped horses (at the age of about 18 months to 2 years and 3 years old) to perform as though they were fully matured (6 years old) is completely and absolutely unnatural. It’s sort of like using a sugar substitute instead of using sugar to sweeten your coffee or whatever you want to sweeten. Sugar substitutes are all carcinogenic (cause cancer) so it’s not a good thing. But, an image is created by businesses to create more business. It isn’t natural for horses to be locked up in stalls 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. It isn’t natural for horses to not be able to get self-exercise which they do get on pasture. Horses graze and move around at their own will while on pasture. They get a chance to be free of the dust from the straw used as stall bedding or anything that creates dust and/or mold. They get a chance to breathe clean air while out on pasture, in some locations anyway. It isn’t natural for horses to be constantly forced, doped, or whipped to do the things that they are forced to do in horseracing and for pari-mutuel betting, gambling, wagering. The wagering handle is what is important to these greedy people who want horseracing to continue with or without COVID-19. The economic impact of this PUBLIC HEALTH PANDEMIC on The Stronach Group would naturally hurt their wagering handle so that is the only “natural” thing about calling it an “ecosystem” and that is a totally different use of the word. It is figurative rather than literal. No matter what though, for Ms. Stronach to use the word “ecosystem” to describe their money-making (wagering handle and government subsidies), horse-killing, labor-abusing machine is nauseating!!!!
Stop the abuse and killing of these beautiful animals! They are pushed to their limits and given drugs to keep going through injury and exahustion for the ludicrous entertainment and greed of humans. Their reward at the end of their “use” is to be killed or sold to slaughter houses.
SHUT DOWN HORSE-RACING — FOREVER — good, rational, compassionate People will utilize their power for good — you’ve heard the excuses : allow me to give you just one, “Horses are born to run.” — SAYS WHO!? – clearly, this is self-serving and the belief that Animals have a certain “place” in the World — even if it were agreed that Horses are 2nd-class citizens, WHO says it’s OK to abuse, torment, ridicule, brutalize them? — Don’t forget, many of us NEVER realized what went on behind the scenes, so the bad people have been getting away with their horror for decades — NOW that we KNOW, we must STOP their evil in this industry — the best solution is to remove Horses to Sanctuaries, and SHUT DOWN HORSE-RACING — FOREVER.