For many if not most in racing, there is a certain detachment from the current climate. Often, these people talk and act as if living in a different time – some bygone era when horseracing really was thought of as “The Sport of Kings” (or at a minimum, one of America’s most popular sports). Today, of course, that notion is a joke, even if you’re not a full-blown activist like us here. The great majority of the population, I’m convinced, looks at this and says, “Really, we’re still whipping horses so people can gamble?” In fact, I’d be willing to bet the house, pardon the pun, that if racing were put to a national referendum, an up-or-down vote, we’d win handily.
In any event, this detachment often produces moments that are at once pathetic, callous, and risible. Writing (in the Paulick Report) in response to Arizona Commissioner Rory Goree’s sharp criticisms of his state’s racing industry, Tim Kelly, a prominent horseman in the Tucson area (Rillito Park), said this:
“Goreé’s disruptive comments didn’t stop there. He went full force…providing readers a devastating visual image of a horse who broke down at the Rillito track on opening weekend. No one likes to see a horse break down, just like we don’t like seeing soccer kids get trampled on the playing field or Olympic athletes meet suffering last-minute injuries preventing them from getting to the podium.”
“just like we don’t like seeing soccer kids get trampled on the playing field”
What’s left to say?
Yes sir, this guy is delusional. Olympic atheletes take risks And that is Their CHOICE!!
Also , obviously, they dont usually die!
I don’t remember ever seeing an injury like this on a childs’ soccer field. I do remember terrible injuries like this in a child ABUSE case.
Sure we hear about occasional athletes suffering broken bones while playing their sport, but it’s not a death sentence.
But in horse racing it’s EVERY DAMN DAY.
Tim Kelly, how many horses have you killed???
You’re blaming Rory Goree for providing a “devastating visual image”??? You and your demented co-horts are the horse-abusing degenerates that are providing the fatally injured horses at Rillito Park. Getting trampled on a soccer field would be too kind for you! You deserve to be arrested for FELONY ANIMAL CRUELTY, Tim Kelly!
Wanda….you need to send him this note on his fakebook page. Pretty sure he has one. What a complete shell of a human being.
And comparing exploited catastrophically injured horses to Olympic athletes just not being able to get to the podium for their moment of glory because of a lat minute boo-boo displays a level of willful stupidity that should be illegal.
Rebecca, I want to apologize for my curt response to your statement the other day …. I had read somethings that the miserable pro racing morons had been saying … needless to say, it put me in a prickly mood. Look, I’m just thankful we have you on our side in this SO worthy cause for the beautiful horses.
What’s with all these racing apologists feeling the need to explain, “WE DON’T LIKE IT,” when these hideous horrors occur on the track? Horrors that mangle and mutilate their victims, requiring them to be killed? You don’t like it? Really, no shit?
In a word, DUH. We know you don’t like it: It’s inconvenient. It’s shameful. It’s ugly and messy and expensive. It turns the stomach of anyone with a soul. It bolsters the now-proven conviction that there’s not a thing in the world they can do to prevent it from happening — several times each and every day in the U.S. alone(!).
So they’re resigned to trying to HIDE their horrors. Because preventing them doesn’t work — and no state has shown that more glaringly of late than Arizona. They’re the front-running cesspool in the ocean of cruelty and corruption that is the entire industry. Nice work, AZ.