04/04/2023
Credit Ban The Grand National
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In 2011 shockwaves of upset were felt around the globe, when the equine corpses of runners Ornais and Dooney’s Gate lay covered by green tarpaulin on worldwide live TV. Freshly claimed victims of the infamous British Grand National, slayed like sacrificial lambs in the interest of British culture and tradition, in scenes long regarded by many as beyond the pale of civilised discourse.
For runners with the stamina and luck to negotiate the course to completion, life-saving intervention is often required in the immediate aftermath, such is the extreme demand of excruciating athletic endeavour, in ultimate test and demonstration of grit through hard won victory. Metaphorical and real example echoing historic might, thus aiming to further accrue patriotic sentimentalism deep into the psyche of the collective population through illusions of grandeur and indomitable supremacy.
For hardcore pundits and exponents of racing, the deaths of the two horses would arguably have served as a defining expectation of the Grand National’s level of extreme challenge, regardless of how regrettable and accidental the industry would have them portrayed. Catastrophic trauma deaths happen in Horseracing worldwide as standard with unabated regularity on account of racing’s deeply inherent flaws, that have never been, and arguably cannot be mitigated. Deaths that go hand in hand with ‘the game’ fostering a hardcore nature of acceptance, of which the Grand National is the pinnacle event and emulated by other nations across the world.
In 2011, under pressure from the animal rights lobby an agreement was reached to leave in situ horses that fell stricken during the first of the race’s two circuits. Prior to which such horses would have been dragged aside to clear the course for the runners that came around again for the second time, this, regardless as to the nature of their injuries, and crucially, concealing sight of their fate from viewers. Realisation transcended sensationalism and hype for many as the worldwide audience witnessed the bodies under the tarps, with fences omitted as stewards directed those still running around the stricken bodies that the commentator referred to as ‘obstacles.’
What of the status some twelve years on, for Britain’s flagship sporting display of gladiatorial and hard-fought ruthlessness to the world at large?
In recent years there has been a catalogue of high-profile incidents that have called the ethics of equestrian sport into question. Most noteworthy is of the horse Saint Boy at the Tokyo Olympics. Clearly confused and distressed by the demands of his Olympic performance, his plight hailed a furore of viral recognition for his lonely victimisation at the hands of both rider and coach, who defaulted on their own integrity (through pressure of competition) in their responsibility under the Olympic Charter to protect him from harm in express commitment to moral ethics.
This incident facilitated a change in structure of the Olympic Modern Pentathlon, replacing show jumping with an obstacle course for its human contestants.
In another high-profile case former Olympian turned Racehorse Trainer Sir Mark Todd was filmed beating a horse at a clinic with a tree branch in a bid to get the horse to negotiate going through water.
Be it violation and abuse by a formerly heralded role model, or a blanket issue pertaining to a specific discipline itself, such as the torturously abusive practice of Rolkur/LDR to horses in the world of Dressage, the hypothetical jury has long since returned from deliberating the question of Equestrian Sport’s social license to operate as under extreme scrutiny, both from within and without of all Equestrian spheres.
The biggest hit taken by the Racing Industry alludes to the Gordon Elliot debacle. When Top Trainer Gordon Elliott was picture sitting astride the dead body of the horse named Morgan who had just suffered a fatal heart aneurysm in training. The caption read “New Work Rider” with Elliott gesturing a V sign whilst on his phone. The incident brought awareness of another rider, namely Rob James also sitting on another horse killed moments before in training.
The blatant and obvious disregard for the suffering of the said horses, that those involved witnessed experience excruciating deaths, caused barely containable outrage from the many who learned of it. Galvanising already formed opinions and perceptions about the Racing Industry for callous disregard of the sentient creatures at its heart.
The Panorama programme, ‘The Dark Side of Racing’ raised shocking questions for its investigation into thoroughbred slaughter, charting the arduous long-distance travel of Vyta Du Roc from Ireland, a dual Cheltenham winner trained by Elliott, where undercover footage captured the procedurally incorrect footage of his gruesome death on mainland UK at Drury’s Slaughterhouse in Wiltshire for meat.
The impact to Racing of such incidents alongside growing public awareness of consistently high equine fatality rates via campaign groups is reflected in Racing’s ongoing modifications to its marketing. Often case is the use of heavily photoshopped pictures or even printed drawings, to tone down the grit and steely intensity meted to the horses, despite such very quality existing as Racing’s hallmark. Jockey only posters are noteworthy, as are exorbitantly produced animated versions, albeit with a sinister twist for high profile TV advertising, eradicating the need to use real images of the horses amid growing awareness of the equine pain ethogram and the torturous equipment used to coerce them.
Much seems pinned on the success of Racing’s growing contingent of female Jockeys in terms of a reprieve. Conversely Racing now appears more reliant upon bullish frontmen to explain ‘misperceptions’ of Racing by an ‘uneducated’ general public who likely only dip into racing a couple of times a year.
Historically, upon the decline of Great Britain’s Colonial Rule, assets were transferred to the heartland of Inner City of London, establishing the financial market as a bastion and continuum for British world domination.
A jewel in the crown, and holding court for international soft diplomacy is Horseracing. Is it any wonder that the 2018 Parliamentary debate on the welfare of horses in Racing was a whitewash? In the absence of any independent expert witnesses, with almost every Conservative MP declaring a vested interest. The debate was initiated by Government e petition exceeding one hundred thousand signatures.
Horses, throughout the centuries of their domestication have served to chart our own anthropomorphic development through their unassailable sacrilege to our evolving needs. Chronologically, we now find ourselves on the edge of a precipice, in a race against time against ourselves. As was said in a quote by Primatologist Jane Goodall, we are indeed, ‘the only species to destroy our own environment.’
Amidst calls for reparation to indigenous colonised lands, we must eschew the values that underpinned our calling for rampant pillaging of the world’s resources and creatures.
Harking the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, horses beckon our awakening to A New Earth through the esoterically aligned values of reverence and sanctity as purveyors of the evolution of consciousness.
The Race is on, literally and metaphorically, in accurate reflection of the tyrannical forces of sacrifice ‘we’ remain prepared to impose upon them by upholding the values of parasitic contempt, from which we will foster our own demise.
In an interview with Harveywetdog for Gloucester Radio two weeks before the 2023 Cheltenham Festival, ITV’s Racing frontman Matt Chapman described Cheltenham as the crème de la crème and vehemently opposed the new whip laws imposed just mere weeks before. He argued that people, ‘just want an excuse to slag off something on social media.’ And that, as far as science was able to prove the new design of the foam whip does not hurt the horses, and relies upon noise and movement for effect. Unwittingly there is an element of truth to his statement.
As a prey animal, horses take flight as a herd, on the premise that, if one runs there must be an urgently good reason to do so. Principally, exploitation of this flight instinct is the whole basis upon which racing is predicated. Conservation of their energy is a fundamental survival technique. It is a pretty dumb prey animal that would expend all of its energy – only to have none should a predator strike. Please observe horses in fields and note how often they run. The whip in racing, be it foam or otherwise emulates the cat’s claw, and as Chapman alluded to - through noise and movement - has the horse believe that something with teeth is on its tail. Adding a psychologically cruel element to Racing of which few people seem aware.
In nature, the one that gets left behind is the one that gets eaten. When a horse goes down in racing, in addition to pain and agony from whatever injury they may have sustained, underpinned by their innate instincts the stricken animal ‘knows’ that his detachment from the herd spells the end, and is probably the most brutal of racing’s deeply concealed and darkest secrets. Separation anxiety to horses is quite literally a matter of life and death. The cruel nature of such exploitation cannot be underestimated.
Chapman described the decision by the industry to airbrush the whip out of a victory photograph of female jockey Rachael Blackmore as, ‘absolutely catastrophic’ and indicative of the sports dwindling faith in itself - under pressure from groups who want to see the sport banned outright.
Traditionally, pearl accoutred darlings of the establishment help to balance Racing’s masculine qualities. Imbuing ambience of refinement and sophistication against a backdrop of pristine conditions. Cleverley attempting with bashful ruefulness to placate the impact of post-race fatality announcements through esteemed frontline presentation, that now appears to have given way to the likes of the bullishly assertive Chapman, espousing well packaged untruths about horses as old as the industry itself, and devoid of any hint pertaining to the latest equestrian science, but nevertheless aligned with Racing’s baseline punter audience upon which the future of Racing depends.
Celebrities also play a role in the conundrum of Racing’s promotion. From those who attend Horseracing in the absence of responsible due diligence regarding ethics – to those, who with genuine altruistic intent lend their influence to other high profile animal campaigns but then race their own horses even in the National. Both groups either prepared to exploit for their own gain, or not yet awake enough to see through the veil of cultural conditioning through virtue of their own compassion. Behind which Horseracing hones its greatest skill, namely in the disguise of its exploitation of horses as majestic slaves, to entertain the ruling elite within the false courts of corporate legal fiction. In disgusting displays of mortal carnage, partially eclipsed only by other acts of extreme gratuitous violence such Bullfighting, Dog Fighting, Crush-Videos’ and the like. Dependant however, on its base of support hard-core followers remaining dumbed down enough to value the occasion above resonate understanding as to the subjective suffering of horses.
As quoted recently by the Horseracing Wrongs,
“Death at the track is not clean or tranquil. Young horses collapse from cardiovascular failure, suffer pulmonary haemorrhages, blunt-force head trauma, broken necks, severed spines, ruptured ligaments, and shattered limbs.”
Conundrum it is, for the BHA, especially the British Grand National, a veritable noose around Horseracing’s neck, the rope of which gets longer with each passing year, as people who believe they are tuning into a national event of pride make the connection through its inevitable catastrophes.
Catastrophes whereby film technicians do their utmost to conceal archaic horror. In blatant purposeful coverup of the horse’s torture, amidst a climate of exponential growth in the call for non- human rights. With mere mention of a ban being tantamount to open admission of cruelty, Racing finds itself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Many people remain completely unaware of the hundreds of race horse deaths that occur in training and on the courses each year, or of the huge contingent of horses classed as wastage, who are routinely slaughtered, some without ever having made the grade to warrant the license fee. The Panorama program documented that some 4000 thoroughbreds were killed in the UK for meat during the period of 2019 -2020.
Ethical behaviour is characterized by honesty, fairness and equity. Horseracing poses serious implications for corporate companies, who now collectively carry the weight of intense ethical responsibility for climate change mitigation, nature conservation and environmental protection and to which the interface of their aligned sponsorships for public perception is crucial.
The complicit involvement of veterinarians who are positioned at every other jump in the Grand National, in anticipation of the most gruesome premeditated scenes of equine carnage and suffering, surely calls into question the ethics of veterinary practice, in strong enough breach to evoke a declaration of consciousness from the profession? Rather, it gives tacit indication as to the involvement and collusion of professional bodies – including the leading equine/animal welfare organisations, who contrary to common belief have no independent legal powers and operate under establishment constraint.
The entanglement of governmental and corporate involvement, that has the horse’s fate clasped so tightly in the grip of the hierarchies of power, exposes so desperately the need for exponential grass roots pressure to help them (the horses). For which, the scenes of the 2011 Grand National seemed to have provided a catalyst, from which the industry seems never to have fully recovered. Scenes, not least of the unmerciful beating meted to the ‘near to collapse’ winner Ballabriggs by the winning Jockey Jason Mcguire. The outcry at the sight of seeing the horse whipped, wobbling to a near fall outweighed the sight of the two dead horses that lie dead in his wake, and the roots of the recently modified whip rules likely have their origin all the way back to this incident.
Releasing a carefully crafted statement to address the furore, the lead veterinarian for the BHA at the time Professor Morris closed ranks to defend the industry by saying, “No horse collapsed” which in legal parlance terms of evidence was correct. But the sight of the steaming, heaving horse, absolutely spent and beaten, run to within a whisker of his life, who likely would have collapsed had Mcguire not hastily jumped off at the finish line is a traumatic memory etched forever into the minds of so many. As unmerciful as it was pitiful.
The Grand National divides the Nation, the duality between abject despair for the horses and mindless excitement over an event - literally at all cost, cannot be overstated. Well informed horse owners in particular take to writing, fobbed off for their efforts by blanket, industry crafted reply, that all MPs regardless of Party are bound to send. The bastions of power are impermeable, and the media comply to cut cries of dissent immediately post-race.
The weeks prior to the race itself fosters the most sickening feeling of dread and helplessness for many, in abject disbelief at our capacity and ex*****on of such a heinous act of barbarism as a Nation, especially if horses live and breathe in the depths of your heart and soul. How?
Much hope comes from advanced and emerging scientific knowledge pertaining to horses, and professional well-honed campaign groups focussed specifically on Horseracing. Again, it was Dr Jane Goodall who said, that she has hope because she has faith in the youth, and expresses such faith through her own foundation, Roots and Shoots.
Through their dedicated research, Equine Ethologists, Psychologists and Behaviourist are forging the frontiers to much greater understanding of horses, treading the thin wire of political balance between serving the equine industry whilst integrating evolved equine practices based on scientific models of equine ethograms. For some, their research is combined with extensive and tenacious travelling of the country, in a bid to sow far and wide the seeds of evolving equestrian management systems and horse human communication that is akin to how horses exist naturally, thus enhancing horses’ quality of life, through trust based human interaction, self-autonomy and mitigation of stress. Conscientious private horse owners adopting such methodologies, by definition, serve to widen the chasm between the outdated and arguably cruel practices by which race horses and many competition horses are kept, inadvertently driving the process of horse-keeping for the 21st century.
If zoological parks were to keep their respective species confined in solitary devoid of same species interaction, fed on a harmful atypical diet, and coerced by means of brutal equipment and gadgetry into potentially life-threatening activity, in direct exploitation of their innate instincts it would not be tolerated. It is that simple!
Through the alignment of multiple forces, hope does exist, if not for their emancipation, but at very least the fostering of species-specific human relationship with horses based on trust and mindful regard for them in their own right.
Through their servitude to us over centuries, which was predicated by their strength and conformation, combined with their innate desire for cooperation ‘we’ to our shame have lost sight completely of ‘the horse’ in his own right, so deep is our acceptance and conditioning of his use for our advancement over centuries.
At this time in the 21st century, and despite the horror of their unmitigated sacrifice to us through the development of the first world, still to our shame we torture and demean him for profit and egotistical gain. Through their capacity for sensory acuity and perception as a prey animal, and on both the micro and macro levels, horses reflect to us like proverbial mirrors the exact status of our integrity through the nature of our intent towards them.
How clear they resonate, and how definitively they illustrate, through our actions, our evolution of consciousness relative to the moral and ethical status of our world today.
Posing the question, that the forth coming Grand national – far from being a spectacle of grandiose prestige to be lauded to the rest of the world for capital gain and pretentious adulation, is in fact a cavernously dark portal into the depths of equine hell, and the archaic values upon which it is based are the antithesis to the trajectory from which we will save ourselves.
In his statement after the 2011 Grand National Professor Morris alluded to the “emotive language of the animal rights activist.” Implication being that an address expressing emotion was devoid of facts. Emotional intelligence is surely a pre-requisite of judicious empathy? Ben Hart, one of the country’s leading Equine Clinicians recently posted the following quote on social media, “Good equine handlers think about their animal’s experience down to the emotional level.”
What is the emotional experience for a horse in race or competition, in questionable acts of persecution? Be that the torturous athletic endeavour of a horse in the Grand National or for example the horse experiencing the practice of forced hyperflexion in dressage? How do competitive riders reconcile their horse’s experience based on Ben hart’s statement?
Be it through the warrior archetype of Joan of Ark activism, holistic energy of the Light Workers therapy, the standing of Campaign Groups against established social norms, the diligent and conscientious Horse Owner, the Earth Angels at the sharp end of welfare and rescue, the Independent Clinicians and their specific modalities or the glowing credentials of the Equine scientist, Ethologist, psychologists, Behaviourists, and the like. It’s going to take an army, an alignment of forces, to redeem ourselves from our exploitation of the forbearance of the horse.
For those who know the truth and depths of the horse’s nature, and put in the leg work traveling length and breadth, with love in their hearts and desperation in their souls to accelerate the shift of Understanding Horses – we see you.
With very few exceptions – of the independent clinicians working their respective methods, their work is a craft of love, underpinned by fundamental principles into transferable technique and often an original gift to the world, with express intent for the good of the horse.
Born of prestige and opulence from a bygone era, nowadays the principle aim of Horseracing is profit through the gambling industry. Definitive evidence, not least the growing public awareness of the horrific racetrack kills are highlighting that the principles and methodologies upon how that is achieved do not act for the good of the horse. Comparison nowadays is oftentimes drawn to the plight of cetaceans in captivity - wooing public sentiment and romanticism for the opportunity to see them perform breath taking displays through cooperative human interaction, only to discover through production of the ‘Blackfish’ documentary that their displays were the illusory product of extreme exploitation ‘dressed’ by pristine albeit wholly unnatural conditions.
What’s more if such comparison holds validity, most noteworthy would be that the Horseracing Industry commits its most extreme transgressions of ethical violation towards mere babies.
During his Cheltenham interview, Matt Chapman echoed the ‘treated like Kings’ racing mantra through his emphatic insistence about racing’s priority for equine welfare and how no one loves the horses more than the people at the heart of the industry. Providing scant justification to a general public that by now are starting make the connection that somewhere things are just not stacking up.
Not least by the disparate emotions of racing’s top exponents, who appear to show more emotion over a prized win than a dead horse. Nevertheless, it would be an unfair and blanket claim to state that across the industry nobody cares for the horses. As anyone involved in the looking after of horses would attest, to a Herculean task that goes on and on in an endless cycle. For the workers and grooms undoubtedly lured by a love for the horse and romanticised notions of glory it would be an unfair refute to suggest that their dedication to the task and their love of the horse from their perspective inside the proverbial goldfish bowl is not real.
More accurately perhaps, as racing mantras go, “Come back safe” seems one of the most often heard, in tacit acknowledgement of the risk that the horses for whom they care are being sent headlong in to.
Following her win on the champion mare Honeysuckle, Rachael Blackmore paid the following tribute,
“Strangely, I only feel now like I can enjoy Honeysuckle properly. I feel like I can say things now like, she never fell, she always gave her all. No matter what happens in my career now, nobody can take Honeysuckle. It’s all done, wrapped up with a nice bow on top. I will forever be grateful to her.
Thank you Honeysuckle.”
At this time, one does not have to look hard, to find groups and chats for private horse owners making the connection through mindful regard to put the horse before any result through the many interwoven threads of self-development and altruistic intent. To the extent that many now adopt a non-ridden philosophy with their horses.
Campaigners with family members who have suffered gambling related harm, support the Gambling Reform Bill which threatens sponsorship of racing’s high-quality coverage on terrestrial TV.
Before last month’s Cheltenham festival, BGC chief executive Michael Dugher railed against affordability checks, stating on Politics Home Website,
“The contribution made to racing by the regulated betting industry is nothing short of mission critical.”
Such is the tangled web between the precarious relationship of racing’s sponsors verses their ethical responsibility to people, horses and environment alike, pitting Horse Racing as an entity like a parasitoidal organism devouring the screaming demands for evolving socioculture, that we must ultimately embrace in a bid to save ourselves. Through the agonising patience of their real and subjective torture, the horses know.
Acting as mirrors… They beckon our awakening, as deeply and profoundly as they bleed for their own salvation.
In the build-up to the 2023 Grand National, cover broke of Animal Rebellions plans for tactical assault to sabotage the race, in demonstrative example of Dr Jane Goodall’s youth as “Hope in action.”
The Grand National towers the 21st century as an archaic monolithic of a bygone era and the weight of history is not on its side.
Written by Sue Francis
