An old, ugly theme resurfacing recently with the outlandish 7 deaths at Churchill Downs before the 2023 Kentucky Derby. “They shoot horses, don’t they?”–an old quote with more than a grain of truth about it.
The Jockey Club estimates 333 deaths from 275,434 starts a year. Another estimate is that 2,000 racing horses die a year during races, training, or resting in their stalls.
A recent New York Times article expose, “At Churchill Downs, Humans Failed Horses Again”, makes for shocking reading. Like boxing, this sport needs to be rethought and reorganized.
You know that cynicism and neglect have set in when you read one expert saying “There’s always going to be a certain level of killing in horseracing and they know it. It’s almost like they have accepted that this is the cost of doing business.”