[bots]

On balance, i don't think horse racing is cruel because horses love to run. What is cruel, is doing things like beating them to run faster, or mistreating them in the name of sport. Putting them in danger or too much stress with large fences etc, I also think is incorrect.

So race them by all means, but look after them and treat them with respect.

[DemolitionRed]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

On balance, i don't think horse racing is cruel because horses love to run. What is cruel, is doing things like beating them to run faster, or mistreating them in the name of sport. Putting them in danger or too much stress with large fences etc, I also think is incorrect.

So race them by all means, but look after them and treat them with respect.

When they train and select runners, they always look for a horse that likes to be out at the front. You're right, the sort of horse that's picked out to be a race horse is a horse that loves to gallop. When you're bringing a horse up for the race track, it spends a huge amount of time on the gallops and from the moment it hits that grass/sand, its eager to run.

The problems I see is too many horses. These horses can clear these fences with ease but when you have 15 or more horses approaching a four an a half foot fence with an added half foot of spruce added on top, it only takes one horse to hesitate or veer sideways to cause accidents and subsequent injuries/deaths.
In the GN they run 40 horses over 30 fences, some of them 6ft in height, which makes it the most likely race a horse will meet its maker. If they halved the number of horses and got rid of beeches brook we wouldn't get anything like number of horse fatalities we see at the moment.