Beefy's Corner - The Off-Topic Chat Thread

The race started in raining conditions, but a lot of drivers still started on slicks. On the exit of Tetre Rouge (a right hander), his car got onto the kerb, which must've been wet, because it spat him off to the left. He went pretty much head on into the wall.

This video pretty much shows what happened...

[video=youtube;KXErF1eRkOI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXErF1eRkOI&feature=player_embedded[/video]

 

The sort of thing in so-called sport, that saddens me so much, is where a horse has literally just run its heart out to win a race and then has collapsed and died.

You could ban horse racing right now and I'd cheer..!

BTW, that's not a knee-jerk reaction by me. I've always thought horse racing should be banned.

 

Hmm, crashes like that tend to end in severe injury if not death. Granted the speeds were obviously lower, because of the rain, but I think we've become a little blunted by F1 drivers walking away from head-ons into tyre walls. I take it this wall wasn't of the forgiving nature.

 

It was an uncovered armco i.e. no tyre wall, which makes me wonder if part of the barrier may have intruded into the cockpit. Someone mentioned earlier that a tree behind the barrier may have been involved. The barrier had a massive hole in it afterwards, hence why the Safety Car was out so long.

 

I'm not big fan of the sport, but you must realise that banning horse racing would result in the deaths of so many more horses than already happen through racing.

 

Success in the animal kingdom is passing on your genes. To do this you have to survive to breed. Horses (and other animals) have achieved success by having characteristics that we desire...whether that is being fast, cute or tasty. In the British Isles, horses, cows, sheep, chickens etc are successful...bears, lions, and mammoths, less so. Most animals would be put down or not bred if we all became vegetarian.

 

It's a bit like the fox hunting ban. There was no massive fox culling when fox hunting was allowed. Is it really that cruel? Or was it banned because public opinion is prejudiced against certain classes?

 

No it isn't really at all. Fox hunting is a fairly unnecessary 'sport' where the aim is to kill, you could call it fox murder and the definition would be reasonably accurate. Horse racing is a sport which is generally safe but can be hazardous to participants, who are generally unwilling. The objective is not for a rider to kill his horse, far from it. My point was just that if horse racing was suddenly banned, many horses would have no monetary value and probably be slaughtered on a large scale.

 

Foxes would have to be culled if fox hunting was banned, but there is the issue that that might be more humane. I used to live in the country and it employed a lot of people, so I can see why country folk might feel strongly about it. My moral side says that you should kill for food (or to keep numbers down if necessary) but not so sure that you should enjoy doing it. However, once you go down that route, should you ignore fishing just because it is the hobby of a large number of people, notably the less rich. Can of worms.

 

The remaining Aston Martins will continue to race, at the request of Allan Simonsen's family.

 

Fox hunting is banned.

Also, so if horse racing is banned, horses will be culled because they're useless? Well who the **** are we to decide what animals should live and what animals should die based on whether they're perceived to be 'useless' or have a 'purpose'? What an inflated opinion we have of ourselves.

 

If we lived in a vast savannah, you would have a point, Pomps. However, there is no room for roaming herds of large herbivores in the UK. Race horses as a breed would die out...just as the large breeds of dray horses are rare now.

 

correct IMHO.the fact a bloody great tree was directly behind the Armco is what did for him . they don't tend to bend to much.....

 

Interestingly, horses only started being used as draught animals after the Middle Ages when knights in armour on huge destriers went out of fashion. People the started using the redundant animals to pull carts and ploughs and so on, where they would have used oxen before.

 

Natural selection is preferable to human selection. As long as the horses didn't suffer.

 

Fair enough . If foxes are deemed to be too numerous then cull them by having trained marksmen shoot them ,no problem with that . But why chase and scare the life out of the poor creatures (we won't go into how they die ) for the gratification of some filth !

 

Time to modernize track safety a little. Armco, trees or both should not be the primary momentum-reducers at any point of any track.

 

LMP1 team Rebellion Racing's update on their last hour of racing...

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Re horses. Just had a quick google.

There are 15,000 horses "in training" in the UK - sauce

Practically impossible to find neutral sources about how many die in races. Some suggestions of 300-400 per year. This one suggests 489 since the start of 2011, so around 200 per year. It seems to depend what you count as a racing death.

8,400 horses were slaughtered in 2012 (including non-thoroughbred), mostly for meat. It's not a fun thought, but I don't think you could simultaneously be outraged at that and not at the millions of cows, pigs and chickens that are also killed. If you don't like both, then fine.

 

My point was that a fairly insignificant number of foxes were actually killed by fox hunters, certainly not as many as are killed by culling. I alway saw the banning of fox hunting as the majority public opinion outweighing the opinion of a minority because their sport was seen as "cruel" and as you said, "unnecessary". Is any sport "necessary"? No ofcourse not. How cruel is fox hunting really, in the grand scheme of things? A few hundred foxes get ripped to death by dogs every year? Compared to the thousands of hens that are cruelly transported and caged for eggs/ poultry, the poor treatment of all the Danish pigs whose meat gets imported by us, Cows being kept constantly pregnant for milk, the cruelty of veal, etc etc

What people don't like about fox hunting is the toffs in red jackets.