Through a FOIA request to the North Dakota Racing Commission, I have confirmed the following racing kill at Chippewa Downs last June 19. (Please note: North Dakota is among the lightest of racing states, with but 16 live-racing days last year.)
Classy Cay – “stumbled, collapsed – fractured both front legs” (The report also noted that one of her shoes came off in the fall.)
The race chart, by the way, simply said, “failed to finish.” Yeah, kind of hard to finish with two broken legs. This was Classy’s second ever race; the first, just two weeks prior, was also a “did not finish.” That time, though, she wasn’t dead yet. The owner/trainer team for both races: CJ Mann, Cotey Wilson.
I’d be REALLY curious as to why the first DNF.
And how she was deemed ‘ race worthy’ two weeks later..
Oh yeah, its horseracing. Sick.
Many racehorses, like Classy Cay, have at least 1 DNF in their PP’s or clearly show a racehorse who is struggling and either physically mentally or both unsound.
Yet, this despicable industry cares nothing about racehorses like Classy Cay because she’s just a number for the wagering coffers and the tracks provide the death rings.
Tracks and the racing commissions are nothing more than public wallpaper who cover-up and/or defend these hell holes all in the name of profit.
Take for example BACKSIDEOFTHEMOON – this gelding has made over $816,000 and that’s STILL NOT ENOUGH to give this racehorse a soft landing and EARNED retirement because there’s more juice in the lemon to squeeze dry.
This gelding is a multiple graded stakes placed multiple winner who took very good care of his original owner LAKE LONELY RACING and Trainer LEO O’BRIEN who are the original parasites that made over half a million dollars on this racehorse and dumped him in for claiming where he was claimed.
4 owner/trainers later he was recently denied entry on New York tracks due to a “10-year old rule” that states racehorses 10 years of age or over can no longer race regardless of their earnings or condition.
So what do current parasites owner CHARLES HALLAS and Trainer PATRICK L REYNOLDS do?
Well they post a video of BACKSIDEOFTHEMOON on Twitter being loaded onto a van to PARX where that track doesn’t have even the minimum protections for racehorses.
He was entered in blistering freezing temperatures with snow and ice conditions that were subsequently cancelled, but not to disappoint they reentered this 10 year old gelding on 2/1/2022 Race 10.
This example shows the extreme differences in rules between one track or another, between one state and another where racehorses can go for another dose of cruelty because you certainly can’t count on parasites to take care of them.
The same goes for multiple doping violating trainers who can continue their abuse by moving from track to track state to state to avoid suspension.
Then there’s abuser and femme fatale trainer LINDA RICE whose been claiming and racing racehorses into the ground for years including killing them.
She’s supposed to be suspended, but true to industry form, there she is training, claiming, and racing.
She claimed a racehorse called CHRIS AND DAVE whose made over $794,000 is 9 years old and she’s repeatedly turned in official workouts during training hours that clearly show a racehorse whose struggling who probably has some serious physical issues if not mental from intense confinement for 9 years of his life.
An anonymous backside stable worker said that CHRIS AND DAVE is being treated terribly by Linda Rice whose under pressure to make back the claiming money and when they don’t satisfy her sadistic appetite many of them end up dead in the dirt under her custody.
She is ordering him to be injected in and out of his joints and needles in and out of his jugular vein to keep him going and hides the vet treatment records so nobody knows – all legal in horse racing.
So when people state that it’s only male trainers who are the abusers – think again because some of the most abusive trainers that I directly witnessed were female trainers like Linda Rice, Carla Gaines, Amber Cobb (who was an Assistant Trainer to Linda Rice before she got her license to abuse and was subsequently suspended), Debra Rombis who actually sent out a filly to race with 2 broken knees that weren’t fully healed at PARX and the infamous Patricia Faro whose record of claiming and killing racehorses is beyond pale.
A reminder that NY and PA gets about 240 million per year each in taxpayers/casino subsidies.
Backside of moon should be retired not raced into ground i feel bad for him
This makes me SICK…
I wonder if there were children watching when this young filly went down. The reveiws of Chippewa Downs on Maps say that it’s lots of fun for the whole family.
Hopefully, there will be at least one person (or more) that remembers CLASSY CAY going down in the dirt and will be forever changed in their thinking about racing horses! Hopefully, at least one person will become an advocate for the horses and protest the ongoing ABUSE & NEGLECT, the PAIN & SUFFERING TO THE HORSES, and the KILLING & DYING. The abusers are bullies!
The more disgusting point is that there are people who can see a horrific injury like this happen right in front of them and STILL support and defend horse racing. What other equine venue has injuries like this constantly happening, not to mention the never-suspicious “sudden deaths” in the barns? I’ve never heard of a horse found exsanguinated in their stall at a show jumping competition, and those 17 hand + Warmbloods aren’t snapping legs left, right, and center, or summersaulting across the dirt to break their necks and shoulders.
Racing is nothing but a meat grinder designed to churn out disposable gambling chips with built in obsolescence, from the pounding of underdeveloped bodies, to the constant confinement, to the drugs, to the complete lack of responsibility for the basic welfare of the horses exploited and abused in a daily basis. When you have horses dying of pneumonia and exsanguination it should be a wake up call to every horseman.
The stakeholders in horseracing are not true horsemen. They might know something about horses, but true horsemanship doesn’t submit to forcing horses to perform beyond their capacity.
Hopefully, those people involved in some way with racing who exist in some sort of delusional state of mind will come to their senses and have empathy for the horses. There will always be the die-hard horse-killers that will always cry foul when they are called out on their own lack of compassion and standards.
How can the killbuyers really care when horses are killed? It’s their business to fill contracts. They could know a lot about horses, but don’t have the ‘whatever it takes’ to have empathy for the horses. A lot of pro-racing people are pro-slaughter. Money is their god.
It’s beyond comprehension that horsemen and women from other equine venues aren’t standing against horse racing. They know what horse abuse is.
Good point, Rebecca! Although keep in mind that many of these “horsemen and horsewomen” are members of organizations that are pro-slaughter. The American Quarter Horse Association registered thousands of new foals annually and the “Western Horseman” Magazine would report on the numbers in their October issue decades ago. At some point, I stopped keeping track of the numbers, but the AQHA, through the WH magazine, boasted about registering the most horses.
It is also a fact that the organization has been registering horses that were highly inbred to the point that the Quarter Horse breed is plagued with certain genetically inherited conditions, which there are tests for. It is also a fact that the AQHA is pro-slaughter. Since 1940 when the AQHA was formed and began to serve as a registry for Quarter Horses, racing or not, there have been sickening practices put into place to cause such a horrendous deterioration of the quality of life for horses. The killbuyers are a convenient way to discard and dispose of horses that are considered unwanted.