A Colonial Downs Kill

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Through a FOIA request to the Virginia Racing Commission, I have confirmed the following kill at Colonial Downs last year:

Alaapatique, Aug 5, R – “fractured sesamoid bones, LF”

(Colonial Downs is the lone Thoroughbred track in Virginia and ran only 7 days of live racing last year. There were also four steeplechase kills in Virginia last year; I have already documented them on the site.)

11 Comments

  1. How sad that I’ve become so jaded about all these racehorse-killers that I first read this and thought, “Wow, only one death in 14 (flat) racing days. That’s pretty good!”
    Turns out, Colonial only ran fewer than five full race days; the rest were cancelled due to either “track conditions” or by “management decision.”
    In other words, they ran only three of their 18 allocated dates, plus only the first three races of their fourth (when they killed off poor Alaapatique), THEN held only one more actual racing day, Aug. 10th, 2020.
    Not so safe a record now at all, is it, Virginia Racing Commissioners?

      • Nancy, I feel the way you do about that god awful Steeplechase. I’d like to force the humans,and their fat asses around a steeplechase, and see how long they last,and fall on their heads and break THEIR necks! It is BARBARIC.

    • All I can say is one horse killed is one horse too many. It’s just horrible and sad no matter what. Just being locked up in a stall for 23 hours a day is torture for a horse. There should be a back door to their stall that opens up to an outdoor corral, run, or paddock/ pasture. The racetrack is a wrong place for a horse to be. It isn’t normal. I remember a horse from 1977 at a training track that weaved back and forth from left to right and right to left. He just could not stop weaving. Since he was a racehorse at a training track, there was no back door to his stall, only the front door. The door was in halves, the bottom half and the top half. His groom told him to stop weaving, but that’s like telling someone that has cerebral palsy to stop shaking.
      So, since the horse could not stop weaving with the top half of the stall door open, his groom closed it. There were no windows or any way for light to come through so I can only imagine how dark and horribly lonely it was being locked up in the stall all by himself.

      • I visited a boarding and training stable that kept horses in stalls unless they were being ridden. I remember one horse, a chestnut gelding, standing with his head in the corner and rocking so his forehead would bang into the wall, over and over again. Not one person in the barn thought this was wrong – it was just “his way of amusing himself”.

        • Rebecca,
          That’s so horrible just to get money for boarding him!!!!! Why would they think anything is wrong with it, since the stable owners get money for boarding??? That’s just sick when they put money over horses!!!!!
          The same goes for racing!!!!!

    • Kelly, P.L.E.A.S.E., do not become “jaded”,that is playing into their playbook,they are counting on caring,intelligent,people becoming Desensitized. Mark my words,this is their “long game”.

  3. Oh god no. Kelly, your favorite Rudy Rod, has an 8yr old chestnut, Celtic Chaos,who I have followed his whole career, I pray nothing happens to Celtic Chaos. Needless to say, I’m quite nervous about this situation!

  4. * They say ‘Virginia is for lovers’…what a cope-out for the treatment of these horses!!! Horseracing needs to end, period.

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