The NYS Gaming Commission reports that Cobra Creek was euthanized after breaking down in the 10th at Saratoga Harness yesterday afternoon. He was four years old. Chief among the complicit: trainer/driver Bob Davis. The weather conditions there, by the way, were “rain,” and living in this area I can tell you it pretty much came down all day.
Last month, I posted on Tapaway, who at seven years old was brought back to race this summer after two years away from the track. Well, the (extraordinary) abuse continued last night at the hellhole known as Mountaineer.
Raced again by his execrable abusers, Nancy Ramunno and Richard Vickers, Tapaway finished dead last – 66 lengths back (“folded up early,” said the chart). This now means that over his last three races, Tapaway has finished a combined 191 lengths back. But because Mountaineer is propped up by (and only exists through) taxpayer subsidization and can thus afford to pay first-last, Ramunno and Vickers keep cashing in. I’d consider a pressure campaign but this track (and West Virginia in general) is notoriously unresponsive and besides, today is Mountaineer’s last day of racing till next April. I shudder at the thought of this poor boy’s suffering – and, his ultimate fate.
The greatest Christmas gift for all would have horse racing disappear from the face of the earth. Wanda we have galloped & held poor horses with fetlocks swollen as big as grapefruits in our 1/2 mile bull ring tracks here in Oregon. Always broke our heart to see such long suffering, gentle horses being abused & completely inured to their lot in life. Have also seen this in so called “Performance ” horse sports as well. All these crummy subsidies & tax breaks need to be eliminated. Those $$ need to be used for better health care for all & education.
A week-long festival is “planned to reinvigorate money-losing Preakness” in 2025. Such things as cultural gatherings, arts activities, and a headline concert will be part of this so-called festival to obviously attract more people to attend the Preakness. All I can say is I hope Horseracing Wrongs will be a significant presence at this week-long festival.
There are two different JC registered Thoroughbreds named TAPAWAY;
1) TAPAWAY (KY), B, G, born April 12, 2008 (Tapit — Victory Road by Ikari). He earned $115,756 in 16 career starts;
2) TAPAWAY (OH), GR/RO, G, born April 11, 2017 [Race Day — La Prada by El Prado (IRE)]. He so far to date has earned $71,132 in 44 career starts to date.
This abuse of TAPAWAY is, unfortunately, never going to be seen by millions of people without showing pictures of him and his joints, whether they are swollen the size of grapefruits or hornet’s nests or not, in newspapers, billboards and anywhere and everywhere where people get their information about what is going on in the world.
People who assume that horses are getting a fair shake in this so-called sport need that rude awakening.
What Mountaineer is doing to horses and how they are exploiting taxpayer dollars to mistreat horses must be known by millions more people until the will of the people who detest this abuse outweighs the abusers and their lobbyists.
He was not the only one in that race lagging behind. Second to last horse was coming in way behind the rest of the entrants also. Tapaway a beautiful gray/white horse like his sire Tapit. It makes me sick that they are bred and bred…then discarded like a piece of recycled material.
Tapaway’ story is so unspeakably sad, and he is one of so many…Subsidizing race tracks made horse racing 100 times worse. It’s these poor unknown horses that sicken me the most–they have every ounce of their strength wrung out of them until they die, and still the owners get a pay back. What sort of “civilization” do we live in?
Something needs to be done to protect horses from their abusers.
It’s unbelievable what some people who claim to be “horsemen and horsewomen” get away with. The abuse that is rarely seen by the majority of people is unfathomable once it is seen.
I appreciate all of you who step up in whatever capacity you can to help bring some sort of justice in the heinously cruel world of, as they are officially called, equestrian sports.
There are criminals calling themselves trainers when they are sadistic abusers who should have been arrested, charged and jailed already.
I think poor Tapaway needs to be rescued. A horse-jacking is in order.