ThisisBigBrother.com - UK TV Forums - The Grand national,is it cruel?

Dene Stansall loved horse racing.

He inherited his family's gambling bug, growing up near Southwell Racecourse and frequently betting on horses.
But one day it all changed.
Dene went from avid racing fan to devoted race horse campaigner.
Here, he goes back to the moment he realised everything about it was wrong.

WARNING - some readers may be upset by images of injured horses.
My grandfather was an Aintree Racecourse turf accountant in the 1950s, though it was known as Liverpool Racecourse at that time.
It was there - by the side of the Grand National course with his bookies pitch next to the running rails - that he met my step-nan, Florrie Brooks.
She was from Knotty Ash, the area of Liverpool made famous by Ken Dodd, situated about five miles from the racecourse.
My formative years were spent with my granddad and step-nan, as my mum was a single parent with three kids and three cleaning jobs to hold down on weekdays.
He lived within a stone's throw of Southwell Racecourse.
Pre-school, I was regularly fed a diet of scouse - a staple hot-pot of Liverpudlian cuisine - with TV racing and visits to Southwell to see the horses race.
The only drawings I ever made as a young child were of horses.
When retired, my granddad went from bookie to betting, always giving his tips to those close to him.
I inherited the gambling bug and throughout my teenage years would chance a risky investment - the Grand National was a particularly favourite race. I remember naming my pet goldfish (won at a funfair at the races) after a Grand National winner - Specify!
Dene went from avid racing fan to horse racing consultant for Animal Aid
A few years later I was driving different girlfriends to the annual event; one time, in a red Triumph Spitfire sports car bought for cash.
It was from money I'd won on a bet on a horse called Braven, which rather cheekily was punted-on from borrowed money from one of the girlfriends, who surprisingly, is now my wife!
I saw the great race horses of the time: Red Rum, Rag Trade, Aldaniti and Grittar - to name but a few.
I took home bits of Becher's Brook and the Chair, which had been kicked out by the horses when jumping these intimidating fences. To this day, I still have these mementos of the now infamous race.
In my student years, I even "chalked the board" at a Ladbrokes betting shop on Grand National Day, scribing the winner, runners up and the SPs (starting price odds).
There were no TVs in betting shops at that time, just the blower which gave a sound-only commentary on the races.
I was a regular race-goer.
But one particular day, I was enlightened to the reality of race horses' lives - and deaths.
I saw two young mares - Fizgig and Queens View - killed in the most horrific of circumstances.
The racing officials said nothing and nothing was reported in the racing papers about either horse.
There was certainly no lamenting of their lives.
When forced to race, they'd given their sweat and toil, and had been pushed to their physical and mental limits, often under pressure from whip beatings.
A pile-up at the Bechers Brook fence during a Grand National race
On the final day of their short lives, racing was too much for them - exhausted, they faltered and fell.
Both were killed.
I started asking myself what was going on here?
The reality hit home.
The animals were simply being used for entertainment and as money-making betting prospects - their betting odds, the weight they carried, the jockey who rode them, the racecourse they raced on, the prize money to be had and their chances of winning, took priority over the risks faced by these unique individuals, each with a personality and character - the tough ones and the meeker ones.
I've personally heard jockeys speaking with other jockeys before the start of a race, describing their mounts as "a ********** piece of s***" and "gutless".
So much for the so-called "sport of kings".
Campaigning for these beautiful, imposing and sensitive animals became a mission.
In 2000, animal campaign group Animal Aid contacted me and we established a fully fledged campaign to try to help race horses.
Animal Aid has an online database that records race horse deaths.
To date, there are close to 2,000 horses' names on there - horses who have died as a result of racing in Britain.
Only recently at Doncaster Racecourse, a young filly, named Anna Fallow, who had not even reached her second birthday, lost her life in her very first race.
We estimated that around 1 in 35 race horses who start a season are dead prematurely by the end of it.
That's around 200 horses killed on racecourses and likely, a similar figure killed from racing injuries that fail to heal or are killed in training.
Race horses lose their lives in a number of ways.
Some collapse and die while racing.
A fall with an almost-instant death from a broken neck is a frequent occurrence.
But the majority suffer fatal spinal or serious limb injuries.
Horses are then "destroyed" - that means they are shot or lethally injected.
If a horse breaks a leg, as in the case of Wigmore Hall whose near-foreleg cannon bone shattered under pressure close to the finish of a flat race at Doncaster, then there is no way of medically fixing it.
Horses are half-tonne (500kg) animals who don't stand still for long.
Injuries such as this cannot heal and as an added burden the extreme pain of laminitis will set into the hooves on the other legs due to the extra weight bearing down on them.
Less serious injuries can carry a death penalty too, even though they may not be life-threatening - just career-ending.
It depends on the extent of the owner's compassion as to the horse's fate.
Horses at Southwell Racecourse in December 2018
Animal Aid believes that many horses who are destroyed could live out their lives as companion animals, living alongside other horses.
I now have two former race horses in my care and have re-homed many others - horses who were deemed no longer profitable and as such were of no further use to their racing owners.
But sadly, hundreds of others are not so fortunate in finding homes and, as I've seen with my own eyes, end up at a slaughterhouse.
Animal Aid's work has highlighted fundamental welfare problems and we've challenge the industry into reform.
Changes to the Grand National course and at other racecourses were spurred by our campaigning.
We want to see a ban on the use of the whip too - as, does most of the public.
This year we're promoting 'Sanctuary Not Cruelty' asking people not to bet on the Grand National but to put their fiver or tenner to good use by sending it to a horse sanctuary.
Sanctuaries are the only hope for many unwanted horses, many of them broken down ex-race horses.