I watched a fair bit of e the Cheltenham Festival, and reveled in the clash with the Fatjocks, but I today I'm a little sick in the gut. I feel terrible raising this subject again, but what the hell. Others have paid a worse price that I will here. So I ask again, is the hunt scene really worth it? Three more lovely animals have perished during the carnival, and another four in the days leading up to the festival. Seven in a week. Would it kill me if the hunt game was abolished? I don't think so. Would I feel better for it? Yes. I just seem to me that the payment of others for the amount of pleasure I gain, is far too much. But I'm piss weak. While others insist that jump racing must go on, I'll follow along feeling like the feeble prick that I am. Sorry if I offend anyone. But I had to get this off my chest. I can't help but feel that amidst all the superlatives thrown at the festival, too little has been raised in relation to the tragedies. Does the media really want to drag this stuff into the open, or do they and the racing powers that be, prefer it to be quietly shunted to one side? I think I know the answer.
Let's put this into perspective Cyc, we have had best part of 140 runners on day four alone. It is a really sad part of the racing, and a very real and important one to discuss, but it's a very small percentage and it isn't just limited to the NH game. To view in comparison I chose one week at random from the middle of the flat season last year (June 15th to 23rd) and we had four deaths on the flat, one in the stalls, one ran through a rail, one on a turn and one broke down. It is a really tough sport, it's as simple as that. I don't feel that I need to defend the NH sport, because I thinks the story of Edwulf does that far better than I could vocalise. The fact that a massive team spent 90 minutes with him, giving him every chance to recover from a very nasty episode after the last in the NH Chase. These horses are treated with respect and the best people are on hand to help when something sadly goes wrong.
Well along with the Grand National meeting it probably is the worst week of the year statistically for fatalities. And we should always look to improve safety, and the dangers are not just limited to the horses, plenty of jockeys get badly injured too. These horses are bred to race though, they aren't bred to sit in a field doing nothing all day. Yes there are dangers, however I feel a racehorse who's raced and been kept active most of its life leads a much more fulfilling life than a pet horse, who sits in a field all day doing very little. Let's not kid ourselves either that this is just limited to jump racing, as Nass has pointed out multiple horses are fatally injured on the flat every week. Horses can even sustain fatal injuries sitting in a field. Look at what happened with Kauto Star or Vautour for example. I think horse racing in general should be very low on the list of priorities for these animal rights campaigners, they should worry about the meat most of them are eating and the slaughter houses it comes from before they worry about what goes on in racing. As for the most part race horses are very well looked after, and have a good quality of life.
Straying a bit from Cyc's original post I thought Lizzie Kelly was extremely fortunate to emerge unscathed from her fall in the Gold Cup. It looked a real sickener and if the dice had rolled another way the headlines this morning could have been awful for NH racing.
I think if we really rip the covers off this subject, we'll find it's a whole lot uglier than most of us are prepared to admit.
