Today is Kentucky Derby Day, a day in which the The Big Lie is at its most obscene. NBC and mint juleps; “The Run for the Roses,” “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports.” But the truth is, today is but a hollow dog and pony show. Horseracing, everyday horseracing, is cold, violent, and merciless. And here’s another hard truth: Horseracing in America is not 100 disparate companies; it is a single entity. As such, a bet at one track is a bet at all; to patronize one race is to patronize all. In other words, if you support – watch, bet on – today’s race, you make possible the following.
(These lists – over 8,000 dead horses in case anyone was wondering – say nothing of racing’s many other wrongs, most prominently the intensive, unremitting solitary confinement to tiny spaces. Nor, of course, does this carnage reflect the fact that most racehorses active today will land in equine hell – the slaughterhouse – at the end of their usefulness. Need I go on?)
The Sacrificed, 2014
The Sacrificed, 2015
The Sacrificed, 2016
The Sacrificed, 2017
The Sacrificed, 2018
The Sacrificed, 2019
The Sacrificed, 2020
The Sacrificed, 2021
The Sacrificed, 2022
I read the statistic that 3 (three) horses are killed everyday in the Horseracing Industry.
A lot of these horses die in anonymity. The majority of horses don’t get recognized in any special way. This meticulous tracking of horses killed by and for racing helps tremendously to understand the magnitude of the ABUSE inflicted upon horses. I can’t watch the Kentucky Derby with any kind of enjoyment because of this website bringing the suffering of the horses to the forefront. How can anyone who is not a sociopathic psychopath or psychopathic sociopath watch horses being forced to endure this life-threatening abuse when you take a serious look at what these horses are forced to endure?
I can’t think of the Kentucky Derby without thinking of the fact that untold numbers of young colts (and fillies) were produced and routinely tortured by the greedy people in this industry and some of those young and underdeveloped colts and fillies were injured and killed on the so-called “road to the Kentucky Derby” and that they will never be acknowledged if they were killed on a private farm or a private training track.
According to our data, Wanda, it’s more like six every day.
The New York Times published Joe Drape’s article on May 6, “Medina Spirit was Pulled by the Forelegs into a World that Let Him Down”. To state what happened to this colt, Let Him Down, is of course a huge under statement. I kept reading with increasing disgust the descriptions of all the people pounding on this poor horse. While reading, my anger also grew knowing what is perpetrated to all the other horses in servitude to these trainers, breeders, and then of course ending up under the horrors of the infamous Baffert. Drape, as noted by a few commenters, does not make any statement of his own opinion. His portrayals of those who claim to love this horse felt sympathetic to me. Not one person quoted in the article, all praising Medina Spirit for his strength, personality, and of course success, not one mentioned the whipping, the confinement, the breeding practices. Drugging of course was mentioned, but because the the University of California at Davis’ necropsy was inclusive, gee, who’s to know for sure? Yeah, we know. I am so disgusted by the Kentucky Derby. The human vanity at this event, using it to show off stupid fashion, be there, be seen, again using the suffering of horses for human caprice, overflows like the sludge pouring out of the Deep Horizon oil spill. The sum of the crimes against Medina Spirit and all other horses forced to entertain, to the thrill and bulging pocketbooks of the human slave drivers, is what killed him.
MEDINA SPIRIT’s necropsy report did NOT determine the cause of death.
The industry decided which vets would examine him with no outside neutral decisions whatsoever – true to form.
Based on everything that I know most of us think that he was killed and the elephant in the room remains:
was Medina Spirit insured at the time of his death?
Most likely, but repeated calls to find out went unanswered or ignored.
FYI, tracks do not have to disclose whether a racehorse was insured at the time of their death that I know of, but we do know that about 10% of racehorses are insured at the time of their death.
The lack of transparency is not shocking for this industry.
Medina Spirit was a high profile horse, but the thousands out there who are sacrificed every damn day for stupid gambling addicts is downright vile.
It’s directly due to HRW that the unknown racehorses are known and not dying in vain.
I believe we determined that it was a certain type of drug or a combination of drugs that could not be detected in a necropsy that killed Medina Spirit on top of running him for 5 Furlongs in a morning workout. These people who killed Medina Spirit are “experts” at what they do; you know, doping and killing and getting away with it and with an attorney to somehow blame it on God — that’s convenient, right?
Any animals used for human entertainment is disgusting Humans supposedly are intelligent and creative, surely we can find something more fun than pushing helpless animals to their limits.
Don’t forgive！😡😡😡
I was a big fan of the Derby. I’m so glad that I saw the truth behind the charade. I used to pray for the horses before each race, though. I’ll continue to do that and also for the races to end.