I've been involved with horses all my life. My partner and I have 6 at the current time, two we bred ourselves.
What's wrong with racing?
Horses don't fully mature physically until they are 5, ideally 6 years old. (If you want a reference for that Google Dr Deb Bennett Ranger article). Racehorses are broken (I use the word advisedly) as two year olds. In fact, because their "official birthdays" are January 1st they can be younger than that. At that age the growth plates in their skeleton have not closed up. Physically they are not mature. We know not to over-exercise puppies, but it's OK with baby racehorses. They are so young they don't even have full tails.
Horses are naturally herd animals, needing physical company and contact with others, freedom to run and forage. Racehorses spend most, if not all of their day shut in the stable. Yes, by human terms they are treated like royalty - fed the best, washed and polished, given the right rugs and lovely bedding. By horse terms that's cruelty. Many respond by developing stable "vices" (in the zoos they call it zoochosis, but it a stable it's OK). They sway, lock their teeth on hard surfaces and gulp, they box walk... you get the picture. Often V shaped grills are put up at their doors to stop them swaying from foot to foot in the doorway (it's called weaving). Others are said to love their stables because they spend a lot of time sleeping or just standing - that's not love, that's shutdown. I've worked with a lot of ex racers, they all, literally all, had some sort of gut problems because of the stable stress and probably lack of movement and natural foraging. That means hind gut issues or ulcers. At the age of two maybe.
There is massive wastage in the racing industry. Just Google it for yourself. Wastage means dead horses, which can be before they even start training.
I heard someone on the radio saying the horse must love it or they wouldn't do it. That's bollocks, they do it because they've been trained to do it and are being pushed along by the jockey.
Someone else said they love it because if they lose their jockey they keep galloping and jumping. Racehorses in a race are operating in a state of high tension. When horses are stressed and adrenalin filled they crave the safety of the herd. So of course they keep running and jumping, they need to stay with the others. This is why we have seen racehorses desperately carrying on with a broken leg.
Of course the people who own and look after these animals love them. But if you truly love an animal then ignorance is no excuse for treating them like this. I often think that if horses vocalised in the same way that dogs do they wouldn't be subjected to half the crap that they are.
What happens when a racehorse retires? If they are lucky they end up being re-trained for regular riding and with a kind owner. Their dodgy guts are medicated. Their crap hooves are looked after properly and recover from their early shoeing and long periods stabled.
For others the picture is not so rosy. Even the Queen couldn't give a stuff about what happened to her horses after racing, unless they were being bred of course. It's know that one of her National winners was found abandoned in field in a sorry state. Another was discovered going through a French race followed by auction. That means the fast ones go on to keep racing, the others go for meat.
I do not agree with what the protesters did, but honestly something needs to be done to raise the standards of how horses are expected to be kept and used. Raising the age racehorses are allowed to race to maybe 4 years old would be a start. But their owners won't want to pay for their keep for that long.
Anyway, I'm not going to argue the toss about this. I know the next thing will be people piling in to say I don't know what I'm talking about, but I do. I did grunt work at a racing stable as a youngster, and thought it was wonderful. Education is a great thing and changed my view completely. Because I'm not going to argue about it, this will be another name change I guess. 😂