It’s the ‘event that stops a nation’. Workplaces crack out the champers at 3pm; productivity comes to a standstill.
And that’s for the staff who even bother to show up – more sickies are chucked on Melbourne Cup Day than any other throughout the year.
The Melbourne Cup: arguably Australia’s biggest annual sporting event. There’s glitz, and glamour, gorgeous dresses, sparkly jewelry and good wines. There’s also the grim reality: The lives of the horses. Or more specifically, the lives that are lost.
Horse racing is not the standard vision of animal cruelty that many of us have been trained to recognise through RSPCA advertisements. There are no squalid kennels, or puppies choked by collars that are too small. The horses are well cared for. Their coats are glossy, their eyes are clear; their muscles ripple as they thunder down the track. They look like the epitome of perfect animal health.
But once the race is over – once the horse no longer has a purpose – there is a darker side to the industry that the cameras aren’t around to film.
Today, a horse running in the Melbourne Cup – who you would’ve watched barreling down the track, its coat slick with sweat – was euthanised after the race. The horse’s name was Verema.
Verema dropped out of the race at about the halfway mark, and it said to have snapped a large bone in the lower leg. Victoria Racing Club stewards confirmed that the horse had been put down, shortly after the race.
And Verema is not the only one to have had a less than noble retirement after competing in the Melbourne Cup. The 33 knackeries across Australia will slaughter between 22-32,000 horses every year. 40 per cent of those horses, are racehorses. The Coalition for the Protection of racehorses estimates that 18,000 ex-racers are killed every year.
Many horses are killed – and counted as ‘wastage’ – after injuring themselves during a race. When they break a leg at such speeds the bone can fracture into many pieces – making it almost impossible for a vet to adequately fix. If the vet cannot fix the break, it means the horse cannot race again; this makes the horse ‘uneconomic’ to keep around.
Activists have identified many other problems with horseracing. The thoroughbreds being trained to race are typically kept in stables where they receive little mental stimulation.
Without room to move, they can develop ‘behaviours’ (like the sad elephants you see pacing backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards in the zoo) biting fences or even themselves repeatedly.
The diet that racehorses are fed to enhance performance means that they are particularly susceptible to gastric ulcers.
During training and competitions, many horses suffer from fractured bones, dislocated joints, and torn ligaments and tendons.
Exertion during races means that almost half of racehorses have suffered bleeding in their windpipe – and a University of Melbourne study found that 90 per cent bleed deeper in the lungs.
And all this is without even mentioning the whips.
Talking about the animal cruelty of horseracing – on Melbourne Cup Day no less – isn’t exactly a popular opinion. It might get you called a ‘killjoy’. Or ‘un-Australian’. And the people who participate in the industry resent the accusation most of all. So many of the people involved in horseracing – the trainers, the breeders, the jockeys – genuinely love horses.
You can see it when they talk about their wins; you can even see it when they talk about their losses. You can see the love they have for the creatures. But that doesn’t change the fact that horseracing could be called animal cruelty.
It can feel fruitless to complain, given that it seems unlikely that ‘the event that stops the nation’ will itself ever stop. The Cup generates an audience of 700 million ever year, and creates over a billion dollars in taxes every year. But that doesn’t change that it could be called animal cruelty.
There are so many things to love about Melbourne Cup Day. The chance to dress up. The fact that it’s the one time a year when you can wear a fascinator on the street, and nobody will judge you for your ostentatious sartorial choices. The fact that workplaces come together. The BBQs, the champagne, the thrill of participating in an office sweep and cheering whenever ‘your’ horse looks like it might pull to the front of the pack – even for a moment.
But that doesn’t change the fact that in my book: horseracing is animal cruelty.
Vale Verema.
If you would like to learn more – or make a difference – please visit The Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses or visit Animals Australia and Pledge to Never Bet on Cruelty.
Do you think horseracing counts as animal cruelty? Or do you think the Melbourne Cup is just a bit of fun? What do you think could be done to regulate the industry, to ensure that the lives of horses are saved?
Edited on 6.11.13 regarding number of racehorses killed each year.
Top Comments
Excellently written but I must point out a few things, learnt from experience.
1) A veterinarian can rarely - if ever - fix broken bones in horses. They are too big, and even if you managed to set and cast a leg, the other legs would develop laminitis, caused from the extra weight put on them that normally the broken leg would support.
2) The feed they are given really only causes stomach ulcers if given pure, without roughage (hay, or chaff). A correctly fed racehorse should not develop stomach ulcers; excepting those who may have stomach issues that cause ulcers.
3) The behaviours you see in stabled horses (sucking air in, stable or clothing-biting, kicking walls, etc) can occur in or out of a stable. Some horses are just not good at being boxed in. My own horse would spend all day in his stable if he could.
4) As for the 'bleeding of the lungs', it is common for the blood to come out of their nostrils, like a nose bleed. If a horse is caught bleeding, it receives first a 3-month ban from racing, and a lifetime ban for a second bleeding. Bleeding also can happen in any horse.
My point is that a lot of these 'problems' in racing are also in general equestrian sport - are we going to ban the riding of horses for pleasure? No one bats an eyelid when Canadian show-jumper Hickstead was put down after a heart attack at a competition, but one racehorse limps off the track and there is an uproar. Yes, there are harsh people in racing, and because it is widely publicised, more people see it. But there is harshness everywhere in this world, and before taking the whip to racing for its realities, perhaps look a little closer. These horses are the trainers' and jockey's livelihoods, do you really think Verema can be replaced so easily? He was probably that trainer's only Cup runner - perhaps even the only great racer in the stable. I'm sure, if he could talk, Verema would rather be put down than suffering for a year or more trying to fix an unfixable bone.
I just want to preface this post by saying that I quite enjoy reading blogs and reviews by Melissa, an extremely talented writer.
This entry is, once again, well written, I just don't agree with the opinions expressed.
"But that doesn’t change the fact that in my book: horseracing is animal cruelty." - If it is indeed a fact in 'your' book, then it is not a fact, it's just one persons opinion, Melissa's opinion.
I'm not disputing what happens at knackeries, but the point of this article, that racing horses is harmful to the horses themselves, I think, is not the case.
As Melissa as had her opinion, that is mine.
Long live the sport of kings!
She means that it is a fact that it is her opinion. And that's pretty obvious. Now go away.