Today, thousands of people will descend on the Gloucestershire town of Cheltenham to drink a lot of Guinness, to lose money and to watch horses die. Yes, welcome to the Cheltenham Festival.
I know really that people don’t go to Cheltenham with the express intention of watching horses die. It’s more about the dressing up, the Guinness and the lost bets. Horses dying is simply an unfortunate by-product of a ‘sport’ in which 2968 horses have died during the last 6574 days. Anyway, it’s not many, is it? Less than one death every two days.
And anyway, your average racegoer, assuming they are sober enough, won’t actually see the upsetting bit when the horse takes a bullet to the brain when the horse is so badly injured it won’t recover. The stewards erect screens around the ailing beast. No one wants to see that, do they?
Mind you, I start from a position of not understanding the attraction of horse racing. What kind of sport, for example, has participants, the horses, who in all likelihood how no idea they are participating in a sport at all, certainly not one where it is sustained almost entirely by gambling? How many horses have you heard about getting nicked for race-fixing or even placing a crafty bet? It’s not many, is it?
Still, even at Cheltenham you are unlikely to have your day spoiled by a fatality. Just the six horses died at Cheltenham and of that number only two died at the festival. Many courses enjoyed (?) far more deaths, like Market Rasen, which saw ten horses shuffle off their mortal coils. If anyone suggests switching Cheltenham to Market Rasen, wherever the hell that is, don’t let them.
So far this March, things have been relatively quiet on the horse death front, with just the three deaths at Kelso, Huntingdon and Doncaster. Two broken necks and a horse that jumped a fence and promptly dropped dead. Way to go, eh?
Guinness, gambling, the odd fight here and there, daft suits and fancy dresses (or should that be fancy dress?), all watching innocent horses literally risk their lives in the name of sport and entertainment.
Let’s hope there are no deaths at the opening day of the festival, but if there are, don’t say you weren’t warned. Let’s hope the screens go up quick enough before you have to see anything unpleasant.
