Bugs, the Grand National is a tough one. I will defend the sport of racing to the hilt, but if in honest I'm finding it harder and harder to defend the races over the National fences - Aintree is the only course in the country with those fences.
Horses do fall and the majority of the time they are fine, but fatalities do happen - there have been 2 so far at Aintree this week. Statistically horse racing is very safe with a fatality rate of 0.2%, but that is still too high.
Racing genuinely does everything it can to make the sport safe for the participants but sometimes these things do happen. I've seen horses drop dead from heart attacks whilst standing in the field, I've seen horses break legs when just trotting round a school. Sometimes you cannot prevent it from happening.
The problem is that the National is very high profile and provokes a lot of reaction from people who don't understand the sport. They watch the National and assume horses die on a daily basis.
I do think it is time to cut the number of runners in the race, but lowering the fences will not help. Smaller fences encourage the horses to jump at speed which is far more dangerous. A big fence commands respect and horses will slow themselves into it. It's a fact that you tend to get more fallers when the going is good or better. Soft and even heavy ground means the horses can't build up too much speed so they jump more carefully.
I respect that peole have their own opinions on the race, but I do get annoyed when people start throwing round accusations about the sport and the people in it. While you do get bad people in racing, as in every walk of life, the majority are caring people who love the horses in their care deeply.