I am writing today in regard to your support of horseracing. Let me preface what follows with this: I fully understand and appreciate the allure. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I was a huge sports fan. And while I didn’t follow horseracing year round, I vividly recall cheering on Seattle Slew and Affirmed, and I was in awe of Secretariat. These, I was told, were great “athletes” – in the case of the last, an all-timer who (along with two other Thoroughbreds) was ranked among ESPN’s “Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century” – and the industry to which they belonged not just another sport, but “The Sport of Kings.” But if true, if horseracing is a sport, then that word must be redefined, for horseracing resembles no other accepted sport on the planet.
In what other sport are the bodies of adolescent athletes abused with impunity?
Would-be racehorses are usually sold (by their breeders) into the system at the tender age of one – mere babies. Now under the yoke of their first trainer, the grinding begins almost immediately. While a horse does not reach full musculoskeletal maturity till the age of six, the typical racehorse is thrust into intensive training at 18 months, and first raced at two – the rough equivalent of a first-grader. In necropsies obtained through FOIA requests, we see time and again 4-, 3-, even 2-year-old horses dying with chronic conditions like osteoarthritis and degenerative joint disease, often in all four limbs. This is clear evidence of the incessant pounding these unformed bodies are forced to absorb.
In what other sport are the athletes kept in intensive, solitary confinement?
Except for a brief exercise/training period in the morning (or when racing), as a rule the horses are kept locked – alone – in tiny 12×12 stalls for over 23 hours a day, making a mockery of the industry claim that “horses are born to run, love to run” and a cruelty all the worse for being inflicted on innately social animals like horses. Prominent equine veterinarian Dr. Kraig Kulikowski likens this to keeping a child locked in a 4×4 closet for over 23 hours a day. Relatedly, practically all the horse’s natural instincts and desires are thwarted, creating an emotional and mental suffering that is brought home with crystal clarity in the stereotypies commonly seen in confined racehorses: cribbing, wind-sucking, bobbing, weaving, pacing, kicking, even self-mutilation.
In what other sport are the athletes whipped – beaten – for motivation?
Beyond the very public flogging that happens at a racetrack – a flogging, incidentally, that would land a person in jail if done to his dog – the racing people thoroughly control every moment of their horses’ lives. This control is often effected through force and intimidation: pushing, shoving, pulling, yanking, yelling, screaming; and through the tools of the trade: nose chains, lip chains, tongue ties, eye blinders, and metal mouth “bits” – which, says Dr. Robert Cook, an expert on equine physiology, make the horses feel like they are suffocating when being forced to run at breakneck speeds.
In what other sport are the athletes condemned to a life as chattel?
By law, racehorses are things – pieces of property to be bought, sold, traded, and dumped whenever and however their people decide. In fact, the average racehorse will change hands multiple times over the course of his so-called career, adding anxiety and stress to an already anxious, stressful existence. This near-constant shuffling among owners, trainers, grooms, vets, barns, tracks, and states is a primary reason why some 90% of active racehorses suffer from chronic ulcers.
In what other sport are the athletes routinely dying on the playing field?
In the combined 418-year history of America’s four major sports – baseball, basketball, football, and hockey – there have been three – three – in-game deaths. About that many horses die in U.S. races every single day. Indeed, Horseracing Wrongs has documented – with names, dates, locations, and details – over 12,000 kills at U.S. tracks just since 2014. Our research indicates that some 1,800 racehorses perish across America every year. 1,800 – that’s about five dead horses a day.
And to be clear, death at the track is neither clean nor tranquil. Death at the track is cardiovascular collapse, or a failed heart – this, mind you, to animals who are mostly still in adolescence. Death at the track is pulmonary hemorrhage – or bleeding out from the lungs. Death at the track is blunt-force trauma from flipping backward, out of fear, in the starting gate, or from collisions with other horses or the track itself. Death at the track is broken necks, severed spines, ruptured ligaments, fractured skulls, and shattered legs – occasionally shattered so severely that the limb remains attached to the rest of the body by skin or tendons only.
Death at the track is also things like colic, a painful, terrifying abdominal affliction; laminitis, excruciating inflammation in the feet; respiratory infections; parasitic infestations; and neurological disorders. Sometimes, the FOIA document simply reads, “found dead in the morning.” These are still-very-much-active racehorses, in between races, and again, most of them mere adolescents.
And finally, in what other sport are the athletes bled-out and butchered upon retirement? Two independent studies (here, here), as well as industry admissions, reveal that many if not most spent or simply no-longer-wanted racehorses are mercilessly slaughtered at “career’s” end. From athlete to meat, in a matter of days.
Truth is, in regard to how the relative animals are treated, there is not one iota of difference between dogracing and horseracing. In fact, one could argue that horseracing is worse for the slaughter. But while one form of animal racing is all but dead – there are just two dog tracks left in the entire country; more telling, dogracing is prohibited on moral grounds in 44 states – the other remains protected under the banner of sport.
Confinement. Isolation. Subjugation. Pain. Suffering. Death. A “sport”? If not for the gravity involved, ‘twould be absurd. No, horseracing is but exploitation of a weaker species for among the most shameful of reasons – $2 bets. Please reconsider. Please, for the horses.