Horses Taking Nasty Falls – This Is Horseracing

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4-year-old First Empress going down in the 2nd at Delta yesterday:

3-year-old American Eagle V going down in the 1st at Lone Star yesterday:

I will update on their respective conditions as information comes in.

5 Comments

  3. Racehorses like FIRST EMPRESS and AMERICAN EAGLE V dropping facedown in the dirt are so disturbing, yet not anomalies, but this track wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the subsidies.
    We now know that the NYRA has never paid ANY of their agreed to fees in years since these agreements were put in place in exchange for millions in subsidies – they didn’t even do that!!
    Yet, the millions in subsidies just kept on flowing in and out of their bank accounts with scarcely a thought.
    They should be made to pay every single red cent back into the public coffers.
    Then pensions.
    In Ontario, Canada the Ontario HBPA received 345 million per year for 12 years while I was actively training.
    They are still getting 100 million per year to this day.
    In exchange for the money the Ontario government negotiated and the HBPA agreed to put aside about 20 or 30% of that money to provide health benefits such as dental and pensions so that it wouldn’t fall on the public coffers.
    It’s pretty much the same blueprint across the board like in New York and Pennsylvania: “The Pennsylvania Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (AKA HBPA) operates at both the Penn National and Presque Isle racetracks. It provides dental, physical therapy, prescriptions, and hospitalization for trainers and their employees who have 30% of starts at the track and pension benefits to trainers.35% is being putting aside for pension” (Education Voters website).
    There is no doubt in my mind that they are not providing most of these benefits and they are certainly not paying out pensions to qualified Trainers who have since retired.
    I know of direct examples where they refused to pay for hospital bills from injuries incurred on the job.
    For example, I put in my pension application last year, when I was 60, to start my pension.
    No surprise that I received a letter saying that “the pension committee decided to refuse my pension.”
    No legitimate explanation offered and we were NEVER told that it had to go through a committee.
    Neither my attorney or unanswered letter demands will tell us WHO are these people?, names?, on this so-called committee which seems to be a front for automatic denials in Ontario and there seems to be a pattern.
    I’ve talked to Trainers in New York State and in PA since then who got the same treatment as me so it’s safe to assume, and you can bet your sweet ass, that the horse racing industry is not living up to their legal commitments to provide these promised services and/or pensions.
    So Seniors like me will fall under the public coffers since most of my working years were on the racetrack.
    Any local government, to our knowledge, has NEVER conducted an independent investigation into the pension process, who is being denied and who is getting their pension neither in Ontario or elsewhere.
    So that makes the government culpable in this scheme to deny pensions while getting millions in subsidies.
    If they were to FINALLY conduct an investigation I’m damn sure that they will uncover a can of worms and if this isn’t enough to END these subsidies to these organized gangsters what else should it take?
    Then again, why should they be getting this money in the first place?
    As for racehorses?
    Well their pension is the slaughterhouse floor.

  4. It’s tough to watch horses going down in the dirt. They’re running at XX MPH. That’s not something that you really want to go out and do yourself — falling face first in the dirt, especially at high speed! Why would anyone with any compassion or scruples want to willing put their horse/s at a high risk of extreme pain and injuries??? Horseracing is unacceptable!!!! This kind of tragedy is obviously NOT OKAY, but locking horses up in stalls for 23 hours a day IS NOT OKAY!!!! There are so many levels and kinds of abuse to the horses in this barbaric industry!!!!
    There should be videos of horses while in their solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for most of their lives. See how disturbing it is to watch horses being isolated and deprived from the normal and healthy way that horses need to live their lives be healthy and happy. The horses are made to suffer in some way for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. There should be videos of the ULCERS that horses get from being deprived of a normal life.

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