Racing Many people love sports and sometimes animals are used to compete against each other. Of all the sports involving animals the oldest may be horse racing. I am not a horse racing enthusiast, but there are quite a few of them and what many of them may not know is horses sometimes die in races and practices. There are plenty of statistics pointing to the fact horse racing is dangerous for horses. Let me give you one I read. It states between 700 and 800 race horses die every year. Peta, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, states 10,000 horses are sent to be slaughtered by the Thoroughbred racing industry. This statistic refers to horses which were new foals born. Some say if you add up all the horse death stats, you will find 20,000 horses are killed in this country every year. I can’t vouch for the stats, but it seems a lot of horses involved in any way with racing, are in danger of being destroyed. I may not be interested in horse racing, but I do like horses. My weakness is animals in general. I love dogs and most of them seem to like me. Even some wild animals have bonded with me like birds and squirrels. I don’t like to see an animal killed just because it is not wanted anymore or because so much was demanded of it, when it got damaged, it was destroyed. Some famous race horses have been sent to be slaughtered after their term was finished. One was named Ferdinand. I don’t follow racing as I said so I have to take the word of people the horse was famous. He had won the Kentucky Derby in 1986 and the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 1987, along with horse of the year in 1987. His reward was he was sent to the meat processing plant to become dog food. He had been sent to stud in 1989 but that all ended in 2002 and it was said many fans were very angry at the time. 7 horses died at Churchill Downs before the Kentucky Derby this year. It is getting so bad people are saying the Derby will be remembered for the vast amount of horse deaths. 3 horses died at Belmont this year. Where horses have a bad injury to a leg, they are usually destroyed. Sometimes a horse will give its all and collapse breaking legs and as I said that means the end for them. Not only did a horse have to be killed at the Preakness Stakes this year but the jockey was sent to the hospital. It just shows you the race can be dangerous for a human also. Can you imagine being a light weight jockey and having an 800 to 1,200 pound horse fall on you. I can’t imagine it at my size. Money means everything to some stables and if a horse has tried hard and then reaches the end of its career, most of the time there is no loyalty to that horse because it is expensive to feed and house. Jockeys have died such as Dean Holland when the horse stumbled and he flew over the front of the horse and then the horse fell on him. Another sport which is not as popular as horse racing, but uses animals, is dog racing. It is not exempt for death however. The statistics for 2022 in Ireland were 254 greyhounds were injured, 84 euthanized and two died while racing. If we take the entire world of dog racing into consideration not only America, there are said to be thousands of dog deaths and injuries. At least there is one good thing, sometimes when a dog is finished at the sport, it can be adopted by a loving family. For one 7 year period there were 11,722 injuries reported and 758 deaths. In some places the sport of camel racing is favored. While it is hard to find out how many fatalities there are among the camels, unfortunately it is not hard to find out about the deaths of children jockeys. Some have called it an evil sport. Some of the children are said to have been abducted from villages and forced into the races. The children are said to be put on a starvation diet to keep them light. In 2010 an investigation was conducted and found many countries still had children jockeys even though countries like the United Arab Emirates stopped the practice. You may not know this but Bulls are raced in places like Kerala in India and Madura in Portugal. Some of the choices of animals to race is quite unusual. Would you believe there is such a thing as Lobster racing? It took place in the 1980s during the Main Lobster Festival. When I think about it, I have to say to myself, how would you do that? An 8 foot tank was filled with sea water and lanes were created inside the tank. A shade was placed over the far end of the tank and the lobsters would move toward it. That is how you race a lobster. They don’t talk about what happened with the lobsters later, but I bet you can imagine. Let’s not forget about Ostrich Racing. It turns out while they have it in South Africa, we also have it in Arizona, Nevada, and several other states. An ostrich can cover 16 feet in one stride and are the fastest birds on land. They can reach a speed of about 43 mph. Sometimes the birds pull a wagon with a rider and other races feature a rider riding the bird like a horse. Ostriches are not trained like horses and at times just do something quite unexpected. Sometimes they choose not to run. The most varied forms of racing have to do with humans. We race each other in so many different ways. We are very competitive and we don’t need animals to do it. The most basic form of racing is foot racing, but it is far from the only type of competition. There is skiing, rowing, bike racing, and so much more. There are races which require not only speed of foot but navigation such as Rogaining, which requires cross-country navigation between checkpoints. The Olympics are actually racing events in one way or another. Even figure skating is a race to see who can perform the most moves in the best way in the time allowed. There is no doubt we love races of all kinds as a people, but we have to make sure they are safe as we can make them and provide for the welfare of the animals we use.
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