- This topic has 384 replies, 85 voices, and was last updated 13 years ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Let’s not forget that the national was Bob Champion’s inspiration to beat cancer in 81.
Without which would he have given up and died.
Thought I post this from the racing post for the debate on the national:
How horseracing lives with the spectre of death
By Alastair Down 11:05AM 12 APR 2011 IT IS simple to attack jump racing, infinitely more complex and challenging to defend it.
Saturday’s Grand National has provoked a veritable storm of protest. Some of the outrage has been from the usual suspects marching under the banner of ‘animal rights’ – whatever they may be. But a large chunk of the disgust has come from the everyday man and woman in the street, and their legitimate concerns have to be taken seriously by the racing industry, because in the final analysis we continue to ply our trade with the consent and tolerance of the general public.
And it is no use jump racing holding its nose and ducking the stark realities. Since 1988the Grand National has killed 20 horses and the spectacle of two of them quite literally laid out for eight million people to see on Saturday has stuck broadside in the craw of many people, not least certain newspaper editors or TV and radio stations hungry for controversy.
Every single argument about the legitimacy and morality of jump racing can be boiled down to one extremely uncomfortable, even disturbing, question and that is: Are you prepared to accept the death of horses as part of your sport?
We will take as read all the usual caveats and qualifications about constantly doing our damnedest to prevent horses being killed, and please let’s dispense with our customary refuge in expressions such as ‘casualties’ or horses ‘paying the ultimate
price’.I can play with fancy words better than most but this is not the time – on Saturday some people were revolted by the sight of dead horses and they are levelling the potentially fatal charge that the Grand National in particular and, therefore, jump racing in general is cruel past the point of acceptability.
Nor is it any use to rail against the cheap sensationalism of the coverage or the twisted logic of critics for whom regard for the truth is an easily avoided inconvenience. There is no point trying to have a sane debate with someone who compares jump racing with bullfighting except to make the small point that on the racecourse everything humanly possible is done to avoid death whereas in the bullring it is fully intended to bring it about.
So we must address the burning question. If your answer is, “No, I am not prepared toaccept the death of horses as part of my sport”, then jump racing is not for you because it is a high-risk, physically dangerous activity in which fatalities are inevitable.
A lot of the problemis that jump racing’s deaths are extremely high profile. As a society we hide death away. We kill hundreds of millions of animals every year and I could show you certain modern farming methods, or the most scrupulously run abattoir, and have you puking in revulsion within minutes.
But such horrors are all hidden from view with the result that someone apparently outraged by Aintree would make no connection with their own contribution to animal carnage on a colossal scale whensitting down later with a chicken sandwich or a juicy steak.
And of course I am as upset as the next man by confronting death. A stricken animal up close is a terrible sight to behold and I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say that if I had to face it time and again there might not come a tipping point when I could take it no more.
But I am prepared to accept the death of horses as part of my sport. The worst part for sure and the one that serves up jumping’s vilest moments. And is my conscience clear?
Yes. Is it untroubled? Most assuredly not.Everybody loathes the death of a horse. But fatalities are just a fraction of what jump racing is about and I would behonest enough to argue that, in an increasingly sanitised, risk-denuded society, the omnipresence of danger lies at the very kernel of its appeal.
I have no argument with those who disapprove of jump racing. But with those who seek toemasculate it beyond recognition or ban it entirely I am implacably at odds.
Those who love jump racing hail from every geographical corner and inhabit all social strata of these islands. They are Everyman and they are legion.
When they make their way to Cheltenham or to Aintree it is not without trepidation of what they may see. But, taken in the round, they find something about the sight, sound and spectacle of jump racing that is spiritually uplifting and nourishing to the soul in a way that no other sport comes close to providing.
And, of course, ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’. How many of those currently howling at jumping’s gate have ever set foot ona racecourse or tried even to begin to understand it before condemning it? There is no tyranny as great as ignorance.
I know many folk, the young in particular, who despite not being ardent racing fans try never to miss the festival because as a feast of very human joy they have found no other occasion in their year to match it.
And that joy is nurtured, raised and rammed tumultuously home into the human breast by an almost primal passion for the jumps horse in full cry. And when one is killed, is it merely marked by some flitting note of regret, or an uncaring shoulder shrug?
Not a bit of it, it is the stuff of genuine remorse, yet still a price worth the paying. The truth is that jump racing gives ordinary people avenues into zones of emotional experience that are increasingly hard to replicate elsewhere. That may render it unfashionable and sometimes uncomfortable, but it doesn’t erode my conviction that it is utterly defensible andalmost wholly admirable.
Reading some of the posts & watching the replays of Nationals on Pathe News UK & Youtube I wonder if a possible solution might be:
1. Reduce the run in from the last fence. This is a very long run in & horses can win or lose here & jockeys resort to the whip, especially in more recent races.
2. Have less of a build up. I know a parade is a good thing & allows everyone to see the horses before the race. Perhaps if weather conditions are like this years again the stewards could cancel it.
Someone should do a survey of when most falls have occured
and i’d suspect it would be on the first circuit when horses and jockeys are not getting a good look at the fences and having trouble on the landing sideThen leave it up to the authorities how to stop them being so serious. Reduce the field to 30 perhaps which is still plenty big enough as a spectacle and would enter horses only that have proven jumping ability
The fact is that the National has more in common with the ‘dance marathons’ of the 1920s (coincidentally portrayed in a film called They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) than with racing. I used to enjoy the National more when I knew less about racing. The more I took an interest in the Turf the more the National seemed a sort of fairground show for ‘civilians’ to gawp at.
It is a very bad advert for the sport, especially in an increasingly PC and state-meddling culture.Yeah I agrree with that, Aintree got no class
The year that Brown Trix died at Bechers Kingsmill died at the last flight in the hurdle race. No public outcry over that; no gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts. No one remembers him at all. No debate about whether horses should be allowed to jump hurdles. I do agree about the build up to the race and the effect [affect?] it has on the horses; it’s something that has crossed my mind over the years. Ballyhane died of a heart attack one year after the race, and I’ve often thought it was linked to the delay at the start of the race due to animal rights protesters at the start. Grand sweeping gestures are being made to make the race safer; perhaps it’s a time to look outside the box and think of other ways to do so. Perhaps someone like Yogi Breisner [sp] could be asked for an opinion?
The fact is that the National has more in common with the ‘dance marathons’ of the 1920s (coincidentally portrayed in a film called They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) than with racing. I used to enjoy the National more when I knew less about racing. The more I took an interest in the Turf the more the National seemed a sort of fairground show for ‘civilians’ to gawp at.
It is a very bad advert for the sport, especially in an increasingly PC and state-meddling culture.More on topic, would an 11yo Miss V Brown manage to get an entry for ‘The Pie’ in a 30 runner, sanitized, compressed weights National?
The race doesn’t play by the usual rules. For those who want it to have a long list of safety prerequisites, i’d suggest that it will no longer be ‘The National’ and you may as well just scrap it and let it live in folklore as the ultimate test of man and jockey, a race that died at the sword of some over sensitive assholes that can’t stop ruining stuff for health and safety reasons.
Do you see the Czechs getting their butt in a sling over taking ploughed fields out of their national race for safety reasons?In response to Yeats post I am not ‘bandwagon’ jumping, it just strikes me that in the range of measures which will now have to be considered regarding the race a reduction of field size is in my opinion one of the those that holds more water.(Along with watering first 6f or moving start forward)
Extra room at the early fences and the ability to more easily avoid an incident such as Dooneys Gate carrying no momentum into Bechers after effectively trying to refuse seem to me to have some logic.
As regards the bypassing of fences anyone who witnessed close hand the consternation caused by the injury to Mick Fitzgerald from L’Ami and the concern about moving him before the bypass procedures would I am sure have the same view. To have horses landing feet away from a prostrate rider and paramedic is unacceptable to my mind when a bypass procedure can be implemented. Similarly to prematurely move an injured rider is equally dangerous.
As also stated green screens should have been left around the prostrate Ornais as they were with Dooneys Gate.
Constructive debate and increased education on the welfare steps taken and their communication (such as why riders had been instructed to dismount on crossing the line) are all essential. Some will agree with some points and others not, that is what the process needs to be about.
- Total Posts 17716
…
[snip]
… the range of measures which will now have to be considered regarding the race …
… Constructive debate and increased education on the welfare steps taken and their communication (such as why riders had been instructed to dismount on crossing the line) are all essential. Some will agree with some points and others not, that is what the process needs to be about.
The good sense of this final paragraph redeems the rest of a depressing (and I think wrong-headed) post. The public does indeed need to be educated constructively about what makes the Grand National the safe race it is, compared to how it used to be, both for riders and horses.
Quite right also to stress the confusing fact that, having issued a sensible directive for jockeys to dismount after the race and tend their mounts, the Stewards made no public statement to that effect – even Claire Balding had no idea what was going on, when she made the Tannoy announcement that Ballybriggs "would be joining us in the winner’s enclosure shortly". This was a missed opportunity to show just how much thought does go into horse welfare, and it looked (though it was not so) an absolute shambles.
As for the rest, any further emollient
"process"
would be extremely harmful. A public PR exercise would be poking at a hornet’s nest, with predictable results. The RSPCA are 100% satisfied with Aintree’s arrangements. So are all interested groups within the sport. The only people who are
not
satisfied are the Animal Righters, who have fuelled the media mischief in the aftermath of the race.
Alasdair Down is correct. These people will continue to stir up all the trouble they can, until the race is banned. So no matter how many
"measures"
are
"considered"
, no matter whether or not there is a
"process"
or
"debate"
, they will not be swayed.
The process of educating the general public of course needs to go on. But that process has to be about making people understand that the sport is not barbaric, or sadistic, and that horses are not treated as expendable cannon fodder for our wicked human pleasure.
I believe we have reached a kind of Equine Maginot Line. Go beyond that line, and we might just as well give up and ban the race right now. Because if it is tinkered with any further, the race will not be supreme, extreme challenge and spectacle that makes it worth having in the first place.
A well-bred colt broke a leg and died in the 2yo maiden today at Newbury. It was horrible to watch. It was pitiable. But should it lead to the
"process"
of a Public Inquiry, into how we can make 2yo flat races over a straight 5 furlongs on good ground safer?
Point is Pinza, everything has NOT been done to ensure the National is as safe as possible without destroying the spectacle.
As Richard says (and I said on page 1 of this thread), more watering and fewer runners.
If the authorities had not acted after Brown Trix fell at Bechers Brook in the 80’s, the Grand National would probably already be a thing of the past.
Value Is EverythingLet’s not forget that the national was Bob Champion’s inspiration to beat cancer in 81.
Without which would he have given up and died.
And if the only thing racing people cared about was money, Aldaniti wouldn’t have got there either.
In response to Yeats post I am not ‘bandwagon’ jumping, it just strikes me that in the range of measures which will now have to be considered regarding the race a reduction of field size is in my opinion one of the those that holds more water.(Along with watering first 6f or moving start forward)
Extra room at the early fences and the ability to more easily avoid an incident such as Dooneys Gate carrying no momentum into Bechers after effectively trying to refuse seem to me to have some logic.
As regards the bypassing of fences anyone who witnessed close hand the consternation caused by the injury to Mick Fitzgerald from L’Ami and the concern about moving him before the bypass procedures would I am sure have the same view. To have horses landing feet away from a prostrate rider and paramedic is unacceptable to my mind when a bypass procedure can be implemented. Similarly to prematurely move an injured rider is equally dangerous.
As also stated green screens should have been left around the prostrate Ornais as they were with Dooneys Gate.
Constructive debate and increased education on the welfare steps taken and their communication (such as why riders had been instructed to dismount on crossing the line) are all essential. Some will agree with some points and others not, that is what the process needs to be about.
Hi Richard,
Did you consider a range of measures necessary for the National prior to last Saturdays race or just since?
Most seemed to think everything was fine and dandy about the race before last week.
Are they in response to the ill informed outcry from the media etc and/or a knee jerk response to what occurred in one year’s running of the race?
All this has happened despite the added "safety" measure of bypassing of fences, can’t recall any major incidents when fences were still jumped despite the "near misses", in fact as Choc Thornton pointed out, a major incident was narrowly avoided last Saturday as a loose horse still jumped Bechers narrowly missing a paramedic, what if it had become impaled on a dolling arrow or landed on someone? Some horses still to prefer to jump which they could still do with the fences partitioned.
The sight of two dead or dying horses being so publicly and openly displayed to TV audiences as the field ran round them was not good and was witnessed by millions of non-racegoers, many of them children, screens will not solve that now. A massive own goal and it’s hard to see how the race will recover from this.To those that want to reduce the number of horses in the grand national, causalities can still happen.
Lets say the safety limit was 30 instead of 40.
Well in 1996 when Rough Quest won the was 27 runners and Rust Never Sleep was the causality in that race. He pulled up lame after galloping and put down after the race.Another example is 1999 Bobbyjo won that national with 31 competitors chasing him home, only one competitor Eudipe never survived Bechers Brook.
The only way to make the national 100% safe is to turn it into a virtual race, but who want to see that, not I nor I think anyone else.
Point is Pinza, everything has NOT been done to ensure the National is
as safe as possible
without destroying the spectacle.
Nobody is talking about making it "100% safe!
There is a difference between "safe" and "as safe as possible" RR.Time of the race tells you they under-watered.
Of course there will be fatalities on softer and with 35 instead of 40. But it will be safe
r
.
It is interesting your example of 1996 was the last time the ground was as hard as it was this year. 99 wasn’t that much better either.
Value Is EverythingSurely any fatalities will be used by these animal aid people to prove a point. Most ordinary people knowledge of racing comes from sweepstakes and the hour build up to the race itself.
My first introduction was in 1977 were my dad placed a bet on for me, I’d no idea of Red Rum’s record before, I just went by name and most of Joe public do the same.
Aintree must make things safer by all means but they must all be seen to make things safer too. Use the media especially BBC to educate people on what safety measures are in place, like dismounting of horses after race to ensure none collapse through exhaustion.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.