racehorse welfare.

​Amongst racing folk, the subject matter of this piece cannot be discussed too many times. Racehorse welfare, though, to my mind, should be kept, as far as is possible, in-house, as to discuss it publicly with those ignorant of the nuances of the sport is to invite opinions and ideas that are impossible to implement.
Sadly, the debate has much in common with the debate on fox-hunting, insomuch as both sides of the divide are preoccupied with animal welfare, even if the ‘anti’s’ have a large section of its community who are overtly political in their idealism, their aim in life to bring down the ruling classes recreation by recreation.
I should make clear that I am opposed to the killing of foxes for sport and for entertainment, although I am 100% in favour of people on horseback gathering with hounds to gallop and jump their way across country. Indeed, I believe it to be an animal welfare issue to keep a non-violent version of hunting as a mainstay of country life. ‘Hunting’ provides a second career for retired racehorses, as well as an irreplaceable stamping ground for the education of young horses and young riders. To lose ‘hunting’ would in itself be an animal welfare issue, a fact the antis find hard to understand.
I was recently informed by an article in the Racing Post that during what I consider to be the ‘infamous’ debate in parliament last year on the welfare of racehorses and the idea that it should be removed from the control of the B.H.A. and into the hands of an independent body – we all know where the agenda for that would lead – one female M.P. was of the opinion that starting stalls were inherently dangerous and should be banned from use. Insomuch that starting stalls do occasionally cause injury to both horse and jockey, she has a point, doesn’t she? But in the overall debate starting stalls are but a minor consequence. But it clearly displays that those who wish to cause horse racing harm will look under every stone to find instances of maltreatment.
One of the main speakers during the debate was Luke Pollard, a Labour M.P. quite local to where I live. Belatedly last week I got around to e-mailing him to put my point of view to him, to defend my sport. Thus far he is yet to reply. Perhaps in his Easter break he will lend some time to catching-up on his correspondence. To give him his due he made it clear in the debate that he did not think there was any cruelty involved with horse racing and I commended him for making this clear to his colleagues. He is, though, strident in his wish to see fatalities reduced to a percentage that even God could not deliver. I asked him why he wished to have equine fatalities reduced to a tiny percentage, fatalities that are mourned throughout the sport as the tragedies they are, that everyone involved in the sport would give ‘worlds’ not to happen, yet he is unprepared to lobby for a ban on all motor vehicles even though an obscenely high number of animals are killed yearly on our roads?
I am not a new recruit to the debate. I was making the point twenty-five years ago that if the governing body of the sport instigated rules that put human influence above horse welfare, as when it was proposed all horses should be ridden out to the finishing post and when the punishment for giving a horse ‘an easy’ is far greater than for a jockey who is found guilty of overuse of the whip, then the sport will be placed under close scrutiny. This has come to pass.
As with all moral debates, the majority of society will not give a fig either way. I am very much working-class. I have no connection to high society or the rich and fabulously wealthy. The misconception throughout the non-racing world is that our sport is elitist. It is not. If anything, it is a sport of the working-class that is underpinned and financially made viable by the rich and fabulously wealthy. What links everyone from the likes of myself at the humblest end of the sport through every strata of society to Her Majesty, Coolmore, Godolphin, Gigginstown, J.P. McManus etc, is love of the horse and concern for its welfare. Our sport will only become untenable if every horse is not honoured, cared-for and respected in small payment for all the joy it helps to bring to so many humans.
What is not required in the battle to win hearts and minds is window-dressing. Window-dressing is easily seen through for what it is and unfortunately this has thus far been the opening gambit of the B.H.A. To have every horse inspected prior to racing by vets at Cheltenham and Aintree but to not to do the same at every race meeting is a clear example of playing to the gallery.
A good example of welfare concern would be if the B.H.A. funded the change from orange padding and take-off boards (a study confirmed that horses do not have orange in its colour spectrum) to whatever colour is more easily seen by horses and not leave the financing of this proper animal welfare advance to individual racecourses. The same must be said of padded hurdles, the introduction of which remains sporadic.
It would be convenient to the sport if this issue would quietly go away, though as M.P.’s are now involved we must assume that is most unlikely. Which is why the racing media and all of racing’s ‘stakeholders’ must continue to discuss how the sport can be made as safe as possible for the one constituent we cannot do without – the magnificent horse.