4-Year-Old Hits Gate, Bolts, Jumps Fence, “Vanned Off”

In the 1st at Mountaineer Wednesday, B’s Wild Man “hit the gate coming out then bolted nearing the turn jumping the outside fence losing the rider in the process, was vanned off.” Here is what that looked like:


This was B’s 11th time under the whip. In his previous 10 races – all but two under trainer/owner Karl Meeks – he finished a combined 222 lengths back, or an average of 22 per race. Perhaps the above was this poor animal crying for relief the only way he knows how. (While I’ve yet to ascertain condition, being “vanned off,” especially at a bottom-feeder track like Mountaineer, does not bode well.)

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12 Comments

  1. This is why horse racing needs to be DEFUNDED as well as outlawed!!! Karl Meeks is a horse ABUSER and BRUTALIZER. This is NOT HORSEMANSHIP!!!! He is one of the many people who should be in jail for Animal Cruelty and Abuse!!! B’S WILD MAN looks to me like he most likely has some broken vertebrae in his neck.
    #HorseracingisAnimalCruelty everyday

  2. And how did he get vanned off??? A chain around his neck being pulled up the ramp??

    • Also, was he dead or alive when they “loaded” him into the van???

    • Good question, Rose. It was his 11th start so it wasn’t like a first time scary environment for him.
      And as Wanda points out jockey could’ve used a buzzer on him. If jockey was wearing a nasty pair of spurs and dug into him as gates opened also a possible reason for horse to react like that.
      I’ve seen horses go through the rails here due to a severe lethal bleed or cardiac arrest and they sort of drift off course whilst running in the pack close to the inside rails smashing through them.
      But this sickening incident tells me that something was done to this poor horse to cause him to bolt like that.

      • He was definitely traveling awkwardly, prior to going through the rail. I thought buzzer too when I watched it happen but then on the replay it seemed like the horse had something wrong with him almost as soon as he came out of the gate.

  3. This Poor, Poor boy! So much suffering. So much heartlessness. These pictures should be beyond disturbing to any normal person. But not to the excrements in the racing industry! They just keep maiming and killing.

  4. This horse was coming home distanced in his previous 10 starts, so WHY was he permitted to continue to be accepted to start in races?

    • “Once a gambling chip, always a gambling chip” seems to be the modus operandi of horse-abusers in this business of extreme brutalization of horses.

    • Mountaineer. No need to say more. They are the ones allowing Sipp to race there, so that alone proves what a shithole they are.

      • Entering horses that clearly cannot win, for any reason, and being accepted by the Racing Secretary when the horse has been proven, more or less, by the first-hand witness and testimony of others (in addition to X-rays showing micro fractures in MONGOLIAN GROOM’s rear Fetlock joint, for example) to be ready to breakdown in some way, shape or form is something that is not limited to Mountaineer. Look at MONGOLIAN GROOM in the 2019 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita Park.
        Regardless of the so-called prestige (or the lack of it), the unscrupulous and morally depraved behavior of human beings unscrupulously exploiting horses is not limited to Mountaineer.

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