The Dangers of a Horse Race

The Dangers of a Horse Race

Horse race is one of the oldest sports and has developed over the centuries from a primitive contest of speed or stamina between two horses into a massive global entertainment industry that involves large fields, sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment, and enormous sums of money. But the basic concept of the sport is unchanged. The winner is the one who crosses the finish line first, and a lot of other things have to go right for that to happen.

Among them, the most important is the health and welfare of the animals that run. Horses are not designed for this sport, and their bodies, joints and bones can ill-adjust to the stresses of racing on hard surfaces at high speeds. Injuries are not uncommon, and it is estimated that three thoroughbreds die every day from catastrophic injuries during races in North America alone.

Even when horses are not injured, they are subject to other unnatural conditions that contribute to poor physical and psychological health. For example, a typical racehorse is confined to small isolated stalls for long periods of time, often with other horses, and can become depressed and anxious as a result of not being able to pursue their natural behavior of grazing. This can lead to a variety of mental and physical problems, including crib-biting (repetitive behavior where the horse grasps a fixed object with its teeth while contracting neck muscles), pacing, kicking and self-harm.

In addition, a horse’s skeletal system is still growing as it matures, and is unprepared for the demands of competitive racing. As a result, many horses must be put into intensive training and racing at ages when they are barely even finished growing, with their bones not fully fused. The typical 1,000-pound thoroughbred is bred with massive torsos and spindly legs, and it does not reach full maturity until about age 6.

This is an enormous burden for the horses to carry, and it can be costly when they are not able to compete at their best. The most prestigious races are called “conditions races” and offer the biggest purses, but horses are also assigned weight in handicap races based on their age, sex, trainer, and previous performances.

The horse-racing industry likes to claim that “horses are born to run and love to compete.” But this is simply not true. Horses are not naturally suited to the harsh environment of a racetrack, and their lives can be cut short by catastrophic injuries, even with the best of care. It is unacceptable that an entire industry can witness such deaths and move on with nothing more than a pang of guilt or a sense of obligation to improve the welfare of its creatures. The suffering of horses like Eight Belles, Medina Spirit, Keepthename, Laoban and countless others can be stopped by recognizing that these horses are more than just for-profit commodities; they are human beings with fundamental rights. Those rights must include the right to life.