YABU. There are always a couple of threads like this every year around the time of the Grand National and nothing at other times. Where are the concerned people the rest of the year? Many of them are probably eating lunch in their cosy offices or homes while the equine industry has been up and about since dawn, working hard for little reward, in all weathers, to provide good living standards for the horses in their care 24/7. And most people in horse racing DO care very much about the welfare of their horses under their charge. These are people who spent every moment of every working day working alongside these magnificent animals. As with every industry there are a few rotten apples but now there are so many more welfare rules in place, lots of on course testing, outstanding veterinary care and cooling systems on race courses , and cameras everywhere , the horse racing industry is constantly raising its game.
I am not naieve about racing as horses do get injured and die but the welfare standards but lots of rules and regulations have been introduced to improve the safety of jumps and the treatment of racehorses. Welfare standards are improving all of the time, we now have much more knowledge about horses in general and the thoroughbreds in particular than we did, and as horse racing is an industry and a business, there are many more owners who have a monetary interest in keeping their horse fit and well. And there is now much more interest in the Retraining of Racehorses and more emphasis on what happens to them after retirement:
www.ror.org.uk/
The confirmation of the horse (heavy body mass on relatively spindly legs) means that injuries do occur on the race track but they also occur in the paddock and out hacking too. If you are a horse-owner you are aware of this all the time. And the truth is, that the magnificent thoroughbred just wouldn't exist if there wasn't a racing industry and they would become extinct just as heavy horses are disappearing now, because they cost too much to feed and keep. The Suffolk Punch is now rarer than the giant panda because it doesn't have a job that it was bred to do. The same thing would happen to thoroughbreds. And to my mind, there is nothing too much wrong with an animal doing what it was bred to do.
And btw, if you have worked out a way to get a 500kg animal to race when it doesn't want to, then you are a more skilled horseman than I am. Horses are not allowed to race if they consistently show reluctance at the start, and they are required under the rules to be re-schooled. Some will refuse that though. Look up the career of a horse called Mad Moose if you don't believe me! He became famous and developed a following precisely because he was reluctant to race!
And don't forget that the racing industry does provide employment for many people: trainers, farriers, saddlers, vets, stable lads and lasses, administrators, sales staff, buyers, breeders, stud farms, horse transport companies, caterers, clothing shops, wine merchants, equine dentists, equine osteopaths and feed sellers, fencing merchants, hay merchants,. and people who offer services like specialist schooling, equine swimming pools, equine photographers and portrait painters, land management specialists etc. These are jobs that are very often very much needed employment in rural areas.
The Grand National isn't my favourite race as I don't enjoy all the hype around it and the height v speed of the race is a difficult equation to get right. If you lower the jumps, then the speed increases. And then horses are bred more for speed more than stamina which creates its own issues about sturdiness of bone. But the height of jumps has been lowered in response to public demand! Trouble is, the general public isn't always very knowledgeable about horses, not like the days when we all relied on the horse as our only means of transport and pulling power. Then everyone had some knowledge but we have since become distanced from these amazing creatures and and what they can do.
What I dislike is the drinking culture in racing that a pp mentioned below. I like a tipple as much as the next person but the selling of alcohol has got out of hand. So many people go horse-racing on high days and holidays nowadays just to dressed up and rat-arsed without even casting a backward glance at these magnificent creatures parading around the paddock or without a thought to all of the graft and effort that was invested in getting them there.
I still defend the industry though because on ordinary days of the week there are so many knowledgeable and genuine horse men and women involved in it, who genuinely care about the welfare of the horse within it, who put the welfare of these amazing animals at the forefront of everything they do.
Think about it, a thoroughbred race horse is all about movement with lungs the size of ten tennis courts (if they could be opened our flat) which expand and contract 150 times a minute, with a heart bigger than a volleyball which can reach 240 beats a minute, with a bicep leg muscle that increases in power about 100 times as it races, with a natural turbo charger of red blood cells that can be released on demand from the spleen, is designed to do the job it has been bred over centuries to do. Would we really want these incredible creatures to disappear off the face of the planet? Because that is what will happen if racing is banned. They are expensive to keep and train, feed and nurture. Very few people are going to do it for fun. And surely there is nothing more natural then an animal doing what it's body is designed to do. A racehorse may only appear at the racecourse three to six times a year, maybe only ten times in its life, but the rest of the time it is being looked after well, by knowledgeable people, with access to great veterinary care, fed well, is exercised most mornings on the gallops and in many yards has access to turnout grazing and a couple of months off in the summer. It's not the awful life that so many people on here are saying.
People have a strange idea that a horse is at its ultimate best in a wild herd, roaming the hills and valleys of Wyoming and Argentina, ignoring the thousands of years they have lived alongside and been domesticated to a certain extent by man . But honestly, I've visited horses in both of those locations and there is a lot of hardship in wild herds. Many are starving, undernourished, with a large worm burden, with skin issues, dragging around broken limbs, suffering slow agonising deaths, it's not always pretty to see. People forget that nature in the raw is cruel.
If I was going to campaign about horse cruelty then honestly, I would look to improve the conditions of hundreds and hundreds privately owned outgrown cobs and ponies, with overgrown feet, who are stuck in the corner of a field in all weathers for years on end and forgotten about without any stimulation or environmental enrichment with minimal input from their owners, because that is proper neglect.