Eight Belles

[ksmith]

Son of a bitch.

Just before it started, I thought just let them all get through the race.

I used to love to watch horse racing, but I'm developing a serious aversion. It just seems like the horses can't take the pounding.

Comments

[naomikritzer]

Yeah. :-(

It made it worse that my four-year-old daughter was rooting for the girl horse with me.

[topayz4.livejournal.com]

I shed some serious tears :(

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know what happened but I can guess :-(

The problem with TB racing is they take horses the equivalent of mayb 10-12 kids, feed them up *bigtime* to develop size and muscle, work them enuf to develop some speed, and them turn them loose on the racing circuit.

Many break down or just fail, and most arent racing after the age of 4.

Given the fact that they dont reach full growth til around 5-6 (when the plates over the knee close is the general term for it) its cruel and inhumane.

The good news is in things like dressage and eventing, the horses are at a proper age, often because they have to mature to build up the proper muscle mass to be able to do something other than run flat out, and also the time it takes to train for something like dressage is years.

Charisma, who is a famous eventing horse here who won gold with Mark Todd at least 2 Olympics, and he retired aged 16 after the second gold

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

US thoroughbreds are also more overbred (inbred) than European and Asian thoroughbreds. I believe the US has several times more deaths per year than other countries. And it's getting worse.

I thought the same thing

[(Anonymous)]

I thought the same thing - just let them all get through the race. May she graze happily in the summerland.

[minxyminou.livejournal.com]

It's horrible that Eight Belles was killed in the Derby...I guess the positive that will come from it is that it raises the general public's awareness of the dark side of the racing industry.

Aside from the issue of very young horses being trained very hard on immature limbs there's also the less visible issue of what happens to huge numbers of unsuccessful race horses. Slow horses injured or healthy often end up being dumped at auction. The lucky ones become pleasure horses..the unlucky ones end up being slaughtered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGE_fMuogKA