RIP to both Admire Ratki and Araldo. I felt sick hearing about their deaths.

Melbourne Cup = 2 deaths.

A-League = 0 death.

Australian media is a fucking joke!!

where's ASADA when you need them...

Anyone saying they should ban horse racing needs to get off their high horse...

In all seriousness though RIP to the two horses that passed away.

Uhu stocks went through the roof yesterday.

About 100 horses die per year, obviously people will maintain their moral outrage for each one as they have lengthy attention spans.

http://www.australianracingboard.com.au/uploadimg/media-releases/Media%20Release%20-%20The%20facts%20on%20horse%20fatalities.pdf

Love that they connect the horse racing industry with livestock farmers :lol:

I own a (non-racing) horse worth about $10k. Bought her for $6k when she was only 2. What racing horses go through mentally and physically is absolutely ridiculous, but then, it's no real surprise when their sole purpose is for people to make money on them by either winning races or impregnating them.

The fact that a 10 year old horse is seen as like a grandfather in the racing business is kind of fucked up when you realise that horses naturally live easily over 25 years.

Rave horses are bred to race . I don't like horse racing much but the amount of crap filling the air and the net yesterday and today is sickening .

I don't have an opinion either way but this article makes a few valid points.

--------------------------------------------------//---------------------------------------------------
The Cup - that'll do me
Date
November 5, 2014


Will we ever look back and wonder why?

If you can focus through your hangover, take a moment to reflect on who in your office gets most excited about the Melbourne Cup.

If it's anything like workplaces I've graced, it's the pissheads and gamblers followed by the flighty types who get excited over everything except their job; you know - the ones who organise the cake for people's birthdays and come around with that big yellow envelope full of spare change asking you to "chuck in".

Like Australia Day and Anzac Day, Cup Day is a uniquely Australian celebration that seems increasingly about getting slaughtered on the drink.

Lord knows I've got no qualms about boozing, yet its appeal is always diminished when the amateurs are out in force peeing and vomiting in the street - that's the women - while the blokes stalk around with a watermelon under each tattooed arm, aching for someone to hold their gaze too long.

In this respect, Cup Day is an awesome opportunity to get some work done and just stay out of the fray.

It's New Year's Eve at 3pm with animal cruelty.

It's a day when half of Australia dresses like the defendant in a one-punch assault case and the other half decides it'd be "fascinating" to wear a three dimensional depiction of the Road Runner's autopsy on their head.

It's best avoided.

As Bernard Keane pointed out on the Crikey website yesterday, even before the news that two of the runners in the Cup had died, there's also the plight of the "equine athletes ... forced to take part in being flogged around a paddock for the pleasure of 100,000 drunken halfwits".

It's always interesting listening to racehorse trainers talk about how much they "love" their charges and, in turn, how much the horses they steward "love" to race.

Aside from the "she likes it rough" creepiness of justifying inflicting pain on another creature, there's the Dr Dolittle delusion you can know what another animal is thinking and feeling.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph rehashed this trope in its editorial today writing: "Thoroughbreds are meant to run. They thrive on it".

The obvious retort to this is why? Cannot that running be done without a dehydrated imp on top of the horse, caning them with a two-foot-long whip?

If a kid waving a flag at a horse can spook it into shattering its leg, what's that say about the animal's anxiety levels?

I don't expect anybody but animal rights activists to give this a passing thought because one of the great uniting themes of being human is we assume we can do whatever the hell we want with animals; they're here for our benefit.

To suggest otherwise makes you somehow bloodless or humourless.

The Australian's Chris Kenny wrote yesterday that people who'd question the virtue of the Melbourne Cup or horseracing "could suck the joy out of a birthday cake".

Something tells me that birthday cake was made with full cream, factory-farm milk and butter.

If nothing else, the Cup is always a handy reminder Melbourne's conceit of being Australia's most "sophisticated" city is a case of pulling a skivvy on a bogan, if not applying lipstick to a pig.

The mounds of garbage and food left behind at Flemington, the drunks in tight suits in various states of repose, Geoffrey Edelsten in yellow satin proposing to his newest embryo, not one but two former Bachelors being feted in the corporate marquees and a spike in domestic violence statistics according to White Ribbon ... it's just so classy.

The day starts as the second panel of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and devolves into the third panel by about 4pm.

And yet, it's the horses that are the animals.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-cup--thatll-do-me-20141105-11h06i.html#ixzz3IAoq76Ua

Pigs are bred to eat but just because they are that doesn't mean they have to be locked up in a metal cage with a metal floor that is so small they can't turn around.

The less spoken about that goddamned horse race, the better

So you're one of them . Do you know people in the industry ?? My ex boss is involved and I've seen the time and effort and love they genuinely have for the horse . Wake up at a crack of dawn and get down to the yards and watch them interact with the animal before having a go with your uniformed views

Its one thing to say one thing, its another to see how its received by someone else.

Am I arguing with you?

I just said just said because something is bred to do something that doesn't mean you can treat them how you like.

Presumably you're OK with Australian sheep getting stuffed into car boots in the Middle East and then having their throats cut so they can die coughing on the ground rather than slaughtered in a humane manner.

I suppose it doesn't matter to you because that's "what they were bred for".

Of course your horse racing owners care for them when there's a buck to be made. Would you horse racing mates give a shit if there was no money in it? Probably not.

Actually he does care about the horses more than the money . He owns horses that aren't race horses . Also what the animal libs sicken me when they fed pork to the sheep . Ffs they have the right to protest but fuck me some of them are extreme . I hate extremists of any order

Actually he does care about the horses more than the money . He owns horses that aren't race horses . Also what the animal libs sicken me when they fed pork to the sheep . Ffs they have the right to protest but fuck me some of them are extreme . I hate extremists of any order

x2 and the betting regulators.

That sentence made me LOL.

Yeah i hate Horse racing but more because a) i don't consider it a sport if the animal is doing the work and b) it only exists to support gambling organisations and sooth the egos of rich toffs.

The power these lot have when it comes to influencing government is clear enough, considering how they managed to keep jumps racing in VIC and SA despite the clear dangers to the animal. I am also uncomfortable with the fact that we put these animals under such physical and mental pressure for the benefit of prior mentioned groups.

Horses are bred to race and certainly can enjoy it, but when you're whipping the fucker senseless and constantly driving it to push it's limits each week to the point that injury leading to death becomes an reoccurring theme, then people are going to have justifiable concerns.

Plus I hate the phenomenon of half the country suddenly becoming an expert on the cup come November despite it being a sport that only gambling addicts follow the rest of the year.

I do follow horse racing a bit but definitely agree that the whips should be banned. The horses should be able to race on their own merit without having the crap whipped out of them.

Read the title. Thought some riff raff had drunk themselves to death.

A lot of people talking about this topic (not necessarily here) have clearly never ridden a horse before. These things are 400kg+ Beasts with 50-60kg humans on them. They are certainly the ones in control. There are also very strict whip regulations these days which really mean they're as much as much a mental stimulant as they are a physical threat.

I would suggest that mistreated and poorly looked after household pets are a much bigger issue in the animal cruelty area than horse racing is. At the end of the day the argument is obsolete because racing is here to stay. The crippling effect it would have on our economy if it were to end ensures that.

I agreed with the article that you posted. I was sitting there thinking, "even if you dont agree on everything, there is always one thing that you do"

Then you went and posted this. Are you the mild mannered less obvious relative of Pole?

If you've taken offence because I wrote the "Middle East" substitute that for Indonesia or any factory farm, feed lot, battery hen farm or pig farm in Australia.

That was an unintentional dig at the Middle East. Was trying to make a point about treating animals well that's all.

If you consider the mention of livestock farmers is context it's pretty reasonable, i'd say a lot more reasonable than the way people have been connecting the horse racing industry with murderers.




Just out of interest, how has your horse managed to appreciate in value like that?


I'd be interested to find out how long cattle could live naturally and at what age they'd be considered old by various industries. Do you also realise that death isn't the only option at the end of a horse's racing career?

horses die in horse races, cricketers contract melanomas

Contrary to what Al Gore believes: This is the inconvenient truth

Also horse racing year round . Horses dying happens at those races as well but the protesters don't care . It seems to me they are only angry when it's the spring carnival . Hell one of the animal activists has stated 48 hours after one of 4 female app retinue jockeys have died 12 k horses have died where's the out cry for them ? Seriously ? There's a time and place to have your say 48 hours of someone dying isn't one of them . Contra to what the Andrew bolts and miranda devine say