High Expectations ended up in an abattoir © Photo Healy Racing
Last week’s Panorama programme was shocking on many levels but the haunting quote for me was that “the vast majority of horses being slaughtered in Britain and Ireland come from Irish owners and trainers.”
Following the images of Gordon Elliott and Rob James sitting on dead horses at the beginning of the year I asked the question - is this sort of behavior confined to Ireland? No other similar images ever surfaced from anywhere else across the globe despite the media storm.
In Ireland we consider ourselves as a nation to have a special affinity with the horse. Our international successes in breeding, training and riding horses validates that.
There is no doubt that the Irish consistently punch above their weight when it comes to thoroughbred racing but perhaps that success is in some way linked to an inherent cold-hearted attitude to the animals.
Everyone involved in Irish horse racing will tell you that they love their horses and you only have to look at the care and attention that all race horses receive in training yards to see that is true. But could it be that this love quickly diminishes the moment those horses are no longer viable from a racing point of view.
Are Irish horsemen and women akin to the boy-racer with his latest souped up motor who spends every waking hour tweaking, polishing and posing with his pride and joy. But as soon as he wraps it around a telegraph pole he instantly discards it and moves on to his next four-wheeled friend.
Winners obviously hold a special place in the hearts of those that are involved with them during their racing careers and invariably these are the horses that we see plastered all over Social Media enjoying their retirement. Everyone has their favourites and in racing the favourites are the winners.
But where are the images of the slow ones? The ones that couldn’t win a race? The ones that never even made it to the racetrack? Unfortunately they most likely make up the majority of the shocking stats mentioned on Panorama - “the overall figures are staggering, from the start of 2019 to the end of 2020, 4,000 race horses were slaughtered in UK and Irish Abattoirs.”
This annual mass slaughter of thoroughbreds isn't just about money and I don't think throwing money at the problem will make it go away. There needs to be a seismic shift in the mindset that exits within the Irish horse racing community and that won’t be an easy fix.
Last week’s Panorama programme also exposed critical failings in race horse traceability. Considering the status of horse racing in Ireland and the value of the sector to the economy it is a given that there should be complete traceability of thoroughbreds from cradle to grave. The fact that traceability for cattle is light years ahead of that for thoroughbreds is embarrassing for the industry.
The farming sector was forced to get it’s house in order following the BSE crisis in the 1990s. Maybe it takes an actual crisis for decisive action to be taken.
So what constitutes a crisis in horse racing? Perhaps the only real crisis is one where the Government funding is withheld. As long as the money keeps flowing the sport will keep stumbling from one PR disaster to the next without dealing with the issues raised.
In the aftermath of the Panorama programme we heard the same rhetoric from the authorities we had heard when the Elliott image emerged - outrage at the abhorrent scenes depicted, hold emergency meetings with all the stakeholders, call for an investigation, re-emphasize commitment to the highest standards of care and welfare to the thoroughbreds.
Those running the sport in Ireland have developed a thick skin when it comes to bad press - they’ve needed to. The Panorama programme on its own is unlikely to have penetrated that defence but with the BHA now driving the conversation and the current political spotlight shining on the sport following the Oireachtas Hearings there is an expectation that some real and lasting changes may come out of this sad story.
It was interesting to note that among all the bad press racing got last week it was also announced that the opening day of Irish Champions Weekend at Leopardstown will be included in the World Tote Pool.
This is a real feather in the cap of Irish racing which up to now has not had any race included in the lucrative Hong Kong Jockey Club led initiative. When the World Pools were launched in 2019 I asked a Hong Kong insider if there were plans to incorporate Irish races and was told that this was not something up for consideration at that time. The inference was that there was a perception within the Hong Kong racing hierarchy that Irish racing wasn’t squeaky clean enough for them to include it. Wonder what changed their minds?
