Dear John,
Nobody really worries that when a football or baseball player steps onto the field, he’ll be dead by the end of the game.
These are young, tough, fit athletes at the peak of health.
Neither the fans nor league officials would tolerate routine death in competition.
Except for horse racing.
That's why we need you to support our “No Tolerance for Track Deaths” campaign with a $10 donation today.
In that industry, there’s plenty of reason to worry that the athletes at the center of the enterprise won’t come out of competition alive.
How do we know this?
Because that’s what happens all the time.
Since late April, there have been nine horses who’ve died in competition at Churchill Downs in Kentucky—perhaps the most storied track in America. At Pimlico in Baltimore, one horse trained by legendary trainer Bob Baffert died in competition. And even after Baffert lost that horse, the rules of racing did nothing to stop him from running a different horse in the Preakness just hours later.
That circumstance tells us a simple truth: the Thoroughbred racing industry accepts the idea that horses die in competition.
In short, when horses go down, it’s excused as part of the sport.
But that should no longer be the case.
More than 7,200 horses died or had to be euthanized between 2009-2021 owing to racing-related illness and injuries, according to The Jockey Club, a national organization that works to improve protections for horses and the integrity of racing.
What other sport would tolerate this number of casualties?
Let’s face this fact: America’s racetracks have turned into crash sites.
There’s nothing to protect the horse when he or she hits the ground at 45 miles per hour. And, of course, there are no seatbelts or airbags for the jockeys thrown from their mounts at a pace not far short of the speed limit for automobiles on most American highways.
Behind the pageantry and beauty of horse racing, there are big questions about the treatment of the horses, with breakdowns of horses on the track occurring at a pace that is cause for alarm and soul-searching.
The bottom line: If horses are going to compete, they should always be able to walk off the track after the run under their own power.
When a catastrophic injury does happen, the show cannot go on. Trainers whose horses who die in competition should be suspended.
No longer should young, fit horses die in a sport that is supposed to be non-violent. Death should not be a regular occurrence in a sport that is centered around just running—something that we’re told the horses love to do.
The culture of racing needs a reboot.
We worked hard at Animal Wellness Action to push Congress to enact the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA). It gives us a vital new framework to make racing safer. HISA sets up a national authority to ban race-day doping and to set other guardrails for the sport.
The Authority also must ban whipping of horses to push them past their limits.
And when the Authority imposes mandatory suspensions for trainers whose young horses die in competition, they’ll get the message that no horse should go into competition with physical vulnerabilities.
I can guarantee you that these changes won’t come from inside the industry. It will take our exhortations and our campaigning from the outside—with no conflicts and no incentives for profits.
Help us drive that change. Support our “No Tolerance for Track Deaths” campaign.
Change must come to horse racing in America.
For the horses,
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Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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