Race horses

So, today I want to talk about race horses.

Why did I choose this topic? Well, first because I’m a horse rider, since my youngest age and obviously I feel concerned by this subject. And second, because it’s a quite controversial subject to talk about. To be for or to be against, everyone can do what they want to and everyone has his reasons to be on one side or on the other. Let’s talk a little about this.

First, I’m gonna give you my own opinion. You should guess that I’m against that, obviously. Why ? For fundamental reasons, or should I say one fundamental reason. The horse health.

During races, horses are forced to run faster and faster under the pressure of their rider’s riding crop. So, I’m not going to say that using a crop is bad because I often use one so I’m not the good person for saying that. But what I’m trying to say is that the bad side of the riding crop is the way you use it. You can have a look on races videos and watch how these riders hit their horse with it. That’s not the way us, other riders, use it.

Besides this violence, there’s a huge and brutal physical effort that horses have to make during races. Some horses could come over their limits even without noticing it, and then an accident quickly happens. For example : 40% of race horses are subject to breathing difficulties, the most current problem is the pulmonary haemorrhage caused by a too intensive physical effort.

It also could happen that horses fall for different reasons, and then they can be hurt very easily and deeply because of the speed. For example : in 2016 a race horse named Gold Fun fell during a race and he suffered a double fracture of his leg. It is complicated to cure serious injuries when it’s about horses legs. Veterinarians had no choice but euthanize him, just because of one second of inattention.

And the last thing that I could point out about the treatment of race horses health is the age. The age of these horses when they begin to race. The age of these horses when they begin to race. To give you an idea, a horse can live until 30 years old, at around 18 years old we put him into retirement according to the length of their career, at around 4 years old we begin to break in the horse, in other words tame him, and then train him. In the world of horse races, horses are broke in between 2 and 3 years old. They are sometimes even not adult, and their growing is not finished which is very dangerous and can bring growing problems for the horse in the future. It is just like you would train a kid of 10 years old for running races. These horses are way too young to undergo such treatment.

After all what I just said, you may wonder why these races are still allowed, right ?

Well, that is probably for the same reason that Corrida is. Many people love these races. And above all, people love betting on which horse’s gonna win the race. This generates money, a huge lot of money, that’s why it’s still going on today. Everything is led by money, and horse riding broadly speaking is a quite rich sport. Horse races entertain, generate money : why would we want to stop it ? Once again, animals’ well-being is not taken into account when it’s about business. If a race rider were here he would probably say “it’s wrong, we do take care of our horses”. That is partly true, because before and after

...