Last week, the following horses were injured so badly they required the “equine ambulance” to get off the track. While fates remain unknown at this time, we will eventually get death confirmations on many, if not most, through our FOIA reporting. (Note: “bled” indicates pulmonary hemorrhage.)
Secession at Charles Town (race replay scrubbed)
Cool Lester Smooth at Mahoning
Lunar Rocket at Parx
Lady Ahava at Penn
Honor a Wild Train at Louisiana
Army Proud at Aqueduct
Sheza Golden Eagle at Louisiana (also fell – video below)
Pk Silver Streak at Louisiana (same race as above; reported as “fell, DNF,” no ambulance)
Nataliecorona at Sunland
Bella’s Password at Laurel
Kiss Me Ina Flash at Remington
Coach Bargatze at Turfway
Chaos Agent at Turfway
Fun Nfancy Dancer at Remington
Canelosecret at Remington
The replay of Sheza Golden Eagle and Pk Silver Streak going down at Louisiana Friday. This clip underscores one of the risk factors for catastrophic outcomes: already-anxious horses being compelled – via perched, whip-wielding humans – to run at breakneck speeds in close quarters. Both horses, by the way, just turned two.
(For any new confirmed kills during the week, please see our running 2026 list.)
Very young and underdeveloped colts and fillies, as many people already know, are not developed enough to always maintain a straight and steady path under pressure and the weight of the rider at a walk, let alone a full gallop. These extremely young horses need time to grow and develop in a natural way. In this extremely uncrupulous and demented “sport” with gambling as its “Siamese-Twin” to the horses running for purse money, waiting for the horse to develop to maturity would cost more money than this gambling industry would ever agree to comply with.
In this depraved and cruel industry, any horse (bred for racing) that they can force to submit to getting them galloping under saddle, rider, whip, illegal hand-held electrical shocking device, painkilling drugs, performance enhancing drugs, and general manhandling will do for the morally depraved people of the horse racing industry.
Bumper cars indeed! Looks to me like poor riding along with horses who didn’t get trained properly on running with other horses in a race. Or, more likely, horses too young and immature to grasp that you can’t just try to barge your way through. Another reason, if people are so set on racing, to wait until a horse is certified physically mature. If a horse was 5 or 6 before it raced, it’d also be mentally mature.
And I hope the wait for a horse to mature mentally and physically would dissuade people from breeding horses and owning them for racing. If fewer racehorses were born, if most of the owners couldn’t afford to support a horse for 5-6 years as it grew up, maybe it’d do a lot towards putting the entire abusive industry out of business. Most racehorses are owned by people who should be spending their money on their families, not on a dream of owning that super horse who comes out of nowhere and wins all the big stakes and creatures to stud, to earn them millions in syndication. These owners hire trainers who never move out of the claiming ranks and often have day jobs in factories or offices unrelated to racing. Their jockeys are just trying to cover their rent and car payment with what they get, between race winnings and picking up work as exercise riders. This is the real race world, and it’s not full of pampered horses who get top vet care and a bottle of Guinness every afternoon. It’s full of people who dream dreams that never come true, who barely scrape by, and horses doped and doctored until they barely know if it’s day or night.
So much for the rules of race riding! “A rider is not to impede another rider & to allow another horse at least 4` all around another with out touching of horse or rider.” Just love the stewards inquiry taking no action! Several of those riders should have had a serious talking to about allowing proper racing room & not playing bumper cars with sensitive living horses! One of the worst run 1/4 horse races we have seen in awhile.