Horse race is a kind of betting contest, in which bettors attempt to predict the outcome of a horse race. It is one of the oldest and most widespread sports in the world, and has a long history, with evidence of it appearing in ancient Greece, Rome, Babylon, Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. It is also a prominent feature of myth and legend, with the contest between the gods’ steeds in Homer’s Iliad, for example.
Horse racing is a popular spectator sport in America, but it’s not without its problems. The industry has made many improvements in animal welfare and safety, including introducing drugs that curb the use of painkillers, but horse deaths are still far too common. The Atlantic has published a story that, for the first time, lets the public see a little bit of what animal rights activists have been alleging at the highest levels of thoroughbred racing—and it’s a terrifying sight.
It was a sunny day, and the track at Churchill Downs was a rich brown dirt that smelled like a barn and looked like a sandbar. Eleven horses lined up to start, and when they broke cleanly from the gate, War of Will sprinted off into the lead. He was followed by Mongolian Groom and McKinzie, a small-framed chestnut colt. Behind them, a group of dutiful fans waved their handkerchiefs and yelled.
In the backstretch, the pack drew closer to the clubhouse turn, and at the top of the stretch, the jockeys accelerated. A roar rose from the crowd, and a horde of shrieking humans turned to cheering. The horse with the best chance of winning began to pull away, and the other two jockeys urged their mounts forward.
The equine world is full of crooks who riskyy drug their animals, or countenance such practices by their agents, and then dare the industry to catch them. It is also full of dupes who labor under the fantasy that the sport is broadly fair and honest. And then there are the masses who occupy the middle ground—not naive nor cheaters, but honorable souls who know that the industry is more crooked than it ought to be but don’t do everything they could to fix it.
These people are a detriment to the sport. They may donate money to charities that help racehorses, but they don’t cancel out their participation in the ongoing, often deadly, exploitation of younger running horses who will one day fill those charitable coffers. And they don’t stop watching the races and betting on them, either. They need to realize that if they can watch a champion die during a grueling race or while training and simply move on with a shrug, they are just as much of a detriment to the horses as those who commit horrific acts of cruelty against them. A growing body of research suggests that when news outlets focus primarily on horse-race coverage, voters, candidates and the news industry itself suffer.
