Hannah Sammut

Here is an opinion article I wrote for my J2 class.

Beyond the Track– The Blood Sport of Horse Racing

By Hannah Sammut

An entry in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup in Keeneland, Kentucky is a must for any established trainer who believes their horses have what it takes to be the next household name. With a total $31 million dollar purse that splits across 14 races, it’s easy to see why the event attracts so many entries and national attention. But while attendees place their bets and drink their cocktails, they are, wittingly or not, funneling cash into a sport that operates on deception, abuse, and death.

Most notorious for his frequent scandals within the governing bodies of the race horse industry, this season’s winning trainer was none other than Bob Baffert. Known as “the Lance Armstrong of horseracing,” Baffert walked away with this year’s $6 million dollar purse at the Breeders’ Cup Classic; the most sought-after of Breeders’ Cup wins. Baffert has an impressive track record: His horses have won the Kentucky Derby six times and have won the Triple Crown twice in the last five years.

And yet the same trainer has an equally disturbing reputation for crossing ethical lines in the sport. His horses have failed 29 drug tests  over the span of his career, four of which occurred in the past six months. He raced two horses on Saturday with a lengthy track record of failed drug tests and doping scandals. His horses have had traces of Dextrorphan, lidocaine, and corticosteroids in their systems, all of which are banned substances and can have fatal side effects. He’s been investigated for doping 2018’s Triple Crown Winner, Justify, and faced no penalty. Decisions made by the California Horse Racing Board took place behind closed doors and the case was dropped— the board never even filed a public complaint. Time and time again he’s found ways to over-medicate his horses after receiving just a slap on the wrist.

Baffert isn’t the only one with a bad drug habit; he’s following the industry standard. A web search for any top trainer in the field brings one to the inevitable doping offenses associated with their name. In March, charges were brought against 27 individuals for an international doping conspiracy, including Jason Servis, the trainer of Maximum Security, the most valuable racehorse in the world. Forced to train at only 18 months old with an undeveloped system, trainers inject their horses with diuretics and painkillers so they can ignore the bone spurs, bowed tendons, and cracked hooves literally held together by superglue that would usually render other horses lame.  Lab technicians have found everything from traces of cocaine, antipsychotics, Viagra, Thyroxine, and even frog venom 40 times stronger than morphine, called dermorphin, in drug tests. These drugs serve as supposed painkillers, lactic acid buffers, metabolism boosters, and even try to prevent pulmonary hemorrhage when horses over-exert themselves.

Doped up, these horses run until fatal injury. With ankles the diameter of coke bottles, a broken leg is not only career-ending, but life-ending too. The typical lifespan of Thoroughbreds are 30 years, but 2-year-olds are usually euthanized on-site if they suffer a break during race day. It’s considered the most humane option too— when breaks are so bad that legs splinter off like toothpicks there’s not much else that can be done. Over-breeding render the young horses unable to support their weight on only three legs.  Career-ending injuries are so common on the track that they have their own term to sound more palatable; instead of a horse fracturing enough bones that euthanasia is used, it’s referred to as “breaking down.”  Nehro, a promising colt from top trainer Steve Assmussen, was found to have a missing pulse in two of his necrotic feet. A few days after the discovery he died of severe colic on the morning of the 2013 Kentucky Derby.

 A figure from the Jockey’s Club Equine Injury Database averaged that almost 10 horses die per week on U.S. racetracks. That’s over 500 horses annually, and it’s a conservative number compared to the New York Times’ report of 24 deaths per week. On smaller-scale tracks, necropsies are seldom done to understand the underlying factors of why a horse broke down, and therefore trainers are rarely held accountable. Last season alone, 30 died on California’s Santa Anita course. With so much money at stake, horses are pushed to compete despite wet track conditions and loose footing.

While there have been public pressure and even congressional efforts for better racing conditions and stricter drug tests, it has failed to root out the cruelty that is the core of the sport. These horses are hardly in their adolescent stage; their value tanks after they retire around 4 years of age. Unless they’re one of the elite few that can be sold for breeding rights, the fate of a retired racehorse is a murky one.

If they’re lucky, horses can be sold to owners who want to give them a second chance as therapy animals, pets, or showjumpers. That’s how I acquired Simon, a bay Thoroughbred who quit the track at 3 years old. I was told by his previous owners that he was just not competitive enough for racing, and only won a measly $1,900 in his two-year career. The only remnant of his past life was the telltale sign of a racehorse—the upper lip tattoo with his racing number.

That leaves the remainder of these former athletes, the ones who can’t be sold, yet have spent countless hours training and dedicating their life to the sport, about to approach a grisly end. They don’t joke about the glue factory for nothing.

While the days of selling horses to make animal-based glues are over, (we can thank the invention of synthetic adhesives) the future of a retired racehorse can still be just as morbid. Instead of glue, money has been found in the meat market. Though the production of horse meat for consumption in the U.S. has been outlawed, it doesn’t prevent the thousands of horses sold to international borders for meat trade. Over 10,000 Thoroughbreds are sent to slaughter annually.

No amount of legislation and protocol will prevent the industry of abuse that is horse racing. It’s been tried. Over the past few years, businesses that rely on animal exploitation have been slowly outlawed as spectators become more aware of the cruel heart of the practice. Sea World closed its dolphin pools, The Ringling Brothers stopped including animals in performances, and greyhound racing is illegal in most states. Shouldn’t horse racing follow suit?