Major Cabbie (below) is dead after breaking down in the 4th at Santa Anita Saturday. He was six years old; ’twas his 25th time under the whip.
In reporting this, the “fourth Fall-Meet death” (it’s actually the fifth) at Santa Anita, in the LA Times, the racing apologist masquerading as journalist John Cherwa notes: “This fall meeting has been a significant backslide from last year when the Arcadia track had no deaths either racing or training.” Which only further proves my long-held position that while the kill numbers will fluctuate from track to track, meet to meet, the numbers for the industry in the aggregate – which is the only thing that matters – are unfailingly consistent. By the way, Santa Anita, that new supposed bastion of “safety,” has now notched 19 kills on the year (yes, Mr. Cherwa, they all count, including the poor ones who die, most often painfully, in their stalls).
So much WRONG with this death, in particular, at the SADT. But I want to point out one element of Major Cabbie’s killing that makes it especially egregious. And that, as always, is the CHRB and all their self-congratulatory crowing about their “vastly improved” Horse Safety record. It doesn’t exist.
What does exist is a painfully obvious attempt to deceive the public and forestall the inevitable end to animal racing in California — and, thus, the dismantling of their entire organization itself — by voter referendum. They HAVE TO make-believe the death numbers are dropping, even when they clearly are not. Last week’s double-day public meetings featured more than the usual amount of backpedaling about which kills they choose to “count” — and which they don’t. Executive Director Scott Chaney even stated that they had recently included ONE off-track death from Golden Gate (an injury that occurred on track property, but horse was euthanized at UC Davis) on their Equine Fatalities list. They DID?(!) That admission is quite telling, considering they’ve spent the past two years pleading to us all that NO racehorse deaths that occur off track property can be included in their (super-scientific) system of kill counting. Of course, Mr. Chaney also called our arguments — that injured horses were being taken off track grounds to be put down — “spurious.” That’s a word he understands quite well, as a long-time industry apologist and former steward at Los Freaking Alamitos Horse Hell.
Hey, Mr. Chaney: How many thousands of fatal injuries did you personally witness during your tenure at Los Al? Oh, that’s right. Nobody bothered to count ’em, back in racing’s good old days. Not til Santa Anita (whoops) let it slip about all the tracks’ obscene death tolls did you have to (pretend to) care in the least. So now you must. But it’s too little, too late.
And the horrifying, fatal racing injury of poor Major Cabbie further proves this. Yet again.
How many more innocent animals must die? I ask you this question, you non-real job losers who are making your living off of the HORRIFIC deaths of innocents? Go WORK you lazy scumbags.
I have said it before and will say it again. Let’s end the racing of horses. It is time to stop this cruelty!
Hey Jan, I would like to see the trainers and owners live their lives in a tiny closet 23hrs a day ….EVERYDAY. They would go friggin nuts!
Yes, Bonnie, they would. Solitary and small confinement is a punishment in all cultures.
May this beautiful baby rest in peace now.