when the hard reality spoils the day.

​Warthog died last Saturday.
To the owner, so soon after the horse proved his detractors so wrong by winning a big sponsored handicap chase in front of the television cameras at Cheltenham, it must have been a body-blow. To the trainer likewise. To Warthog’s groom, and her colleagues, many of whom would have ridden the big grey at home, it would have been a punch to the heart. It does not lesson the tragedy that it is very unusual for a horse to suffer a fracture between the first two fences, especially as he jumped the first fence perfectly well or that he walked into the horse ambulance and was administered to quickly and by experienced vets, his suffering lessened through exact professional care. He died after a lifetime’s love and care. And as with all racehorses, I would hope, which is not the case with all animals around the world, he will both mourned by the good people at Pond House and remembered fondly in the years to come.
Of course, if we could avoid equine deaths the sport would move mountains to bring that utopia to fruition. It maddens me, for example, when it is proved through scientific study that horses cannot see the colour orange, that time continues to pass and the take-off boards, guard-rails and tops of hurdles have yet to change to a colour horses can differentiate from the colour of the fence or hurdle. This ground-breaking, game-changing, research needed to be fast-tracked onto the racecourse and schooling grounds. That racecourse obstacles remain tainted with orange discredits the B.H.A. and dishonours the reputation of trainers for allowing the sport’s protectors and governing authority to drag their feet on a matter of the highest importance to the sport’s boast that equine welfare is its greatest concern.
As the circumstances behind the death of Warthog reminds us, it will always be impossible to reach a figure of zero fatalities within the sport, as some politicians have advocated. And if you are one of those clever-asses who pipe-up and say ‘ban the sport and zero per-cent will be achieved overnight’, I say ‘well what about the many thousands of horses who overnight will be rendered as defunct as plough-horses when tractors were introduced? You think wrongly if you believe the redundant Shires and Suffolk Punches lived out their lives to extreme old age in buttercup patterned pasture.
Our sport reveres the thoroughbred. With the exception of the Queen and Winston Churchill, I suspect there are more statues in honour of racehorses in this country than any human being and all other animals put together. People dedicate their lives to the sport. I have known people take the blankets and duvets off their own beds to ensure a horse is kept warm on a cold night. Because of this dedication to the horse, many thousands of people earn their living caring for the thoroughbred. It is a sport and an industry combined which without fail puts the interests of the horse central and foremost.
But let’s not beat about the bush, sweet-coat the truth as if day-by-day the sport is varnished with lashings of ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘My Sweet Pony’: it can be a savage-hard sport at times. I imagine, like me, the 1973 Grand National is high on everyone’s list of racing’s greatest moments. Yet ask David Gandolfo or anyone connected to Grey Sombrero and their opinion will be vastly different. They might wish the race had suffered the same fate of ‘the Grand National that never was’. The reason the majority of racing people are level-headed, respectful and well-mannered, is because the horse takes no prisoners. A horse will as likely bite the Queen as the farrier, kick its devoted groom as likely as it to kick a random passer-by. And anyone associated with racing from a young age also knows that the highs are disproportionate to the lows, that celebrations for the good moments only last for hours, while the lows of losing or losing forever a revered friend, human or equine, may last a lifetime.
The industry focus on the small percentage of annual fatalities on British racecourses, yet the actual number may be something like 173. That remains, if you picture them lined up in a row, a mortality rate similar to a 1st World War battlefield. Obviously, there is no complacency when it comes to fatalities; everyone involved in the sport would like to see the number spiralling towards the magical if not mythical zero. Not that it will ever be achieved, not in anyone’s lifetime, sadly. Yet one death is one too many. We are all aware of that.
To me, and this is a personal reflection, part of the appeal of the sport, especially steeplechasing, is that it is glimpse of how life used to be in centuries past, when the horse was the turning-wheel of society. I am not an advocate of hunting fox or stag for so-called sport, nor would I want to return to using horses for transport, but where else in our modern world will you see horse and human in harmony, as a team, but in equine sports? Yes, I would limit the use of the whip, and yes, I accept it causes no pain to the horse when used to encourage, though psychologically I believe it can do great harm to a horse. But in the great scheme of things the racing of horses, with all the accepted dangers it entails, is a beautiful spectacle for mankind to behold, a levelling playing field where the animal is equal to, if not above, the human, and is an essential benefit in the preservation of the equine species.
The sport, and the people who comprise the industry, deserve great praise for valuing the horse as at least its equal. If every animal around the world was equally valued there would less of them endangered, and perhaps fewer rendered extinct.