You Bet

I’ve been avoiding writing this post for a long time because ignorance is bliss. A while ago I wrote about how horse racing is very popular here. I saw two jockeys training horses on a beach in Rathmullan--the horses were white with lather and panting as the jockeys whipped them along the soft sand, up and down the strand. The last time I was at Rathmullan, I saw the same thing. I wonder how many horses enjoy racing. Some do, I imagine, others not so much.
In my Sunday paper, the racing pages look like this:

I drew an orange box around one race involving 12 horses. Hard to see, but it was my attempt to get across the scale of racing in Ireland and Great Britain. My estimate is around 700 horses on these pages. One day of races and probably not all the races of that week are listed. When I met Ester the horse sculptor, I asked her as diplomatically as possible what happens to all these horses? They end up in the slaughterhouse--I suspected this but have never researched it. Having just done so, I found a 2006 British article estimating 6,000 to 10,000 horses are slaughtered every year in Britain for horse meat. A 2017 article in an Irish paper said 7,618 horses were slaughtered in Ireland in 2016.
Many of these horses are either former racehorses or are young horses that never made it to the track--culled at the start. One analysis estimates only 35% of horses bred for racing ever race--the rest are surplus to requirements. It is sickening. Horses are smart, sensitive, emotional animals. They can live to 30 but apparently many are killed before age 5.
I don’t understand how a culture can claim to love horses AND turn a blind eye to their distressing demise. The bolt or bullet to the head may be quick and painless, however for quite some time they will have been confined in a slaughterhouse yard where their senses will tell them what is going on. A reporter saw two thoroughbreds with bleeding welts on their necks--they were so agitated awaiting the final gun--not the starting gun--that they were attacking each other.
I wish with all my heart that, as a species, we could evolve so that the sport of kings and princes could recede into the distant past where it belongs.
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