It’s been heart-warming to see so many shiny, happy people living their best lives at the evening horse racing meetings taking place up and down the land, as seen on social media. What is not to love about being out in the countryside, breathing in all that fresh air, and watching magnificent animals galloping by? If I try hard enough, I can almost imagine what it’s like being there, but only almost.
At least in the summer, less horses die at the racing. This is because the racing is on the flat and not over fences and hurdles. The death rate rises dramatically when the fences are back up again, but for now we can rejoice in the fact that only 17 horses have died in all the meetings that have taken place so far this summer, which is to say from 1st June to date. Only seven of the 17 have died so far this July. If you want to enjoy the racing and not have to go through the stresses of seeing an injured horse being hidden from view while the man with the gun arrives to put it out of its misery, summer is probably the right time.
We should be clear that only a minority of horses die when racing. Since 2007, ‘only’ 3051 horses have died over 6711 days. That’s not even a death every other day. The odds are that the vast majority of horses won’t die racing and that you will not be unfortunate enough to be there when one dies.
Quite why horse racing is so popular is beyond me. For one thing, it’s probably the only ‘sport’ in which the main competitor, the horse, has no idea it’s competing. I am always being told how well these horses are cared for, at least until they are taken off to the knackers yard and how they enjoy the best horse lives possible. Well, that’s very good to read, except of course if you had an equivalent race for humans in which someone died every two and a bit days, the odds are it might just be banned. But hey, they’re only horses, aren’t they? Imagine the lives they’d be living if they weren’t racing? Longer ones, perhaps?
I declined to put a photo at the head of this blog, because seeing the carnage on the race courses would be upsetting for many.
