End Horse Racing

Sunday, May 7, 2023. Please join us — and the growing chorus of animals activists around the U.S. — in calling for the end of horse racing. We had hoped COVID might shut it down, then the repeated and frequent deaths of horses at Santa Anita in California in recent years, but this week seven more died in races leading up to yesterday’s Kentucky Derby alone.

If that many athletes died that regularly in another sport, wouldn’t we stop the competition? If jockeys were killed, would we still race? Two of those horses died yesterday in the races leading up the to Derby itself. Why do we not stop the racing to honor them? Instead all the ladies in their fancy hats and gents in their suits, drink after drink in hand, keep cheering them on.

I attended my one and only Derby many years ago. The vivid images of the horses frothing at the mouth while withstanding the pressure of chains drawn taut across their gums to keep them under control while being forced to parade around a paddock filled with people they don’t know shouting and drinking as part of their pre-race parade are still with me. Where else in sport are athletes asked to do that?

Our Thoroughbred mare, Confieme and her mare Starr (pictured above) were cast off by a breeder when Confieme was in utero, did not sell when he sent them to auction and risked ending up in slaughter house. So we took them in.

They are cast offs of a sport where horses are overbred for people to chase Triple Crown dreams and then run too young, too much, on drugs, and then finally discarded when they no longer have monetary value except to a kill buyer.

The horses and jockeys are commodities at the mercy of greedy, ego-driven owners, breeders, trainers and bettors who override these vulnerable and benevolent creatures for their own perceived power and gain.

Horses deserve more respect than this. They have fought our wars and built our civilization. They have carried us tirelessly on their back. They are devoutly loyal partners. And they are magnificently intelligent beings who have much to teach us. Let’s write, speak and envision every race track in America closing for good. Now.