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Not sure whether running an Equine Rescue Centre makes one an "Animal Rights Campaigner" as per the report, or an animal lover (which I’d plump for).
Anyway- nice story and well done to Tim Vaughan and Mark Gichero.
This is a more accurate version of events than the BBC site.
http://equinerescuefrance.wordpress.com … eat-yards/
I am part of EquineRescueFrance – we have seen more of these ex UK TBs in the French meat yards, and are trying very hard to get the authorites to act to prevent this happening.
Can I please thank everyone responsible for saving this beautiful horse. When we had our old pony I got used to people on the field buying horses, saying how much they loved them and how they would give them a home for life..only to sell them on a few weeks/months later when they found they weren’t quite what they wanted or if their own personal circumstances changed. Once a horse gets into the downward spiral it often becomes a one way road I’m afraid.
A lovely story … remember him winning a handicap at Ballinrobe five or six years ago and having a few bob on him at 33’s when he won the Flat v Jump jockeys race at Sandown under Kinane.
Another piece on this story from around the same time, including a dismayed response from Evan Williams, for whom Corran Ard was a first ever Flat winner;
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales … -26753658/
Corran Ard was also on my
Sportsman
Ten To Follow list for the 2006-7 National Hunt season, given the potential I thought he had to mop up a few novice hurdles and then take in a prize of the magnitude of the Imperial Cup (given both his Flat race speed and already-established fondness for Sandown). The paper folded before his eventual hurdling debut, but both that and his second run got a write-up here; http://thatracingblog.blogspot.com/2006 … oring.html .
He was a racehorse I was exceptionally fond of, and I’m convinced he would have made into as good a handicap hurdler as Evan had ever trained but for his training setbacks. To see an old friend like this come so close to meeting a sorry end is a terrible shock, and a pox on whichever post-career "responsible owner" turned out to be anything but.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I believe Evan Williams had wanted to retire the horse as he felt his injuries would not tolerate more racing.
Corrie is not an isolated incident, sadly. More horses from that area were in the same farm.
He would be one of the 2000 plus (2404 in 2006, but the current data is hard to find) that disappear annually after their careers are over.Neither the BHA or Wetherbys can account for these horses. That is roughly 33% of the horses that come out of racing every year.
I am a huge fan of racing, and IMO British and Irish racing is the best in the world. However, the industry needs to address the welfare problems created by overproduction of horses and the increase in race meetings to meet that.
Grayson, the horse is now relaxed and settled in his mind again. He’ll take a while to recover from the ravages of his journey though. Can you believe he still had racing plates on when we went to pick him up? The yard hadn’t even done him the courtesy of removing them.
In racing, there are various bodies set up to protect specific sections of the industry. They all shout loudly about how racing would not survive without them. There’s only one participant in horseracing that is truly indispensible, and that is the horse.
Who protects him?There seems to be a shortage of names of the people responsible for this, at the very least they should be named and shamed.
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