Horse races are a popular spectator sport, with more than six million people passing through the turnstiles each year to watch thoroughbreds tear down the track. The horses’ power, beauty and excitement undoubtedly draw many, but there’s also something insidious about the way we treat them.
For example, when a young equine is rushed into the racing arena even though its bones and ligaments have not fully matured, it can suffer terribly. Increasingly, horses are being forced to race on the same schedules as professional athletes — even when they have sustained injuries that would require rest or, in some cases, surgery. Add to that the spiraling misuse of performance-enhancing drugs, and a sport in which injured horses are often subjected to extreme, short-term stress, and you have a very dangerous game for both animal and human.
Moreover, the conditions in which racehorses are kept can be cruel and inhumane. Many horses are forced to run on hard-packed dirt tracks while carrying riders weighing up to 1,000 pounds. They are whipped and driven at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. And they are often pushed to compete with horses who have received banned substances and have been shaved down to their bone. This is not a sport that most people would tolerate for any other animals, let alone our beloved horses.
And yet, when racehorses suffer breakdowns, it seems that most of us are quick to blame the horse and not the racing industry. In a world that already struggles to pay teachers what they deserve, build affordable housing and keep firefighters on the job, it’s simply unacceptable that we continue to put our tax dollars into a sports industry that, by its own admission, has serious problems.
One of those problems is a huge number of injuries and deaths of the horses that are raced. A group called Horseracing Wrongs has documented that at least 10,311 horses have been killed since 2014 in the United States.
Some of these deaths are unavoidable, but others are not – and many more could be avoided if the industry were to change its policies. There are no economic or policy reasons to keep propping up a sport that cannot attract new fans, can’t sustain itself financially and takes such a devastating toll on its athletes.
Regardless of the cause of the breakdown, it is important for horseracing outsiders to understand the complexities of this sport. When a horse like Sonneteer ran in the Kentucky Derby last year while still a maiden, it took some explaining to friends who typically only tune in for horse races’ big events. To those outsiders, it seemed as if Sonneteer was being punished for breaking his leg in the Preakness, and that’s why some were upset. However, NYSHA veterinarians found that the colt was suffering from multiple, severe injuries and had undergone surgery before his race, including injection of corticosteroids into several joints. His postmortem examination found osteoarthritis and severe degenerative joint disease, along with bone cysts.