Yep, it is a part of something I struggle with, so I do quite a lot of donations to the various rescues. I would say 60% of my overall charity is towards horse rescues.
Have heard that about 40% of the annual foal crop goes to slaughter, but part of me recognizes not every thoroughbred born is intended for racing. Some are born to be food. i think the stat is that 1-in-8 horses that actually end up racing go to slaughter.
Its also a problem for all horse sports, thoroughbreds aren't the only horses going to slaughter. There are thoroughbreds going to slaughter that come from other disciplines as well.
I also follow a lot of what Alex Brown says about it as well as read his book Missionville which is basically about life at Penn National.
Here's a good interview.
https://www.thoroughbredracing.com/a...ow-can-change/
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them? They end up in the slaughter pipeline. It’s the way it is.
People say, ‘we have all these rescues now, you don’t need to do that.’ But that’s not true. There’s not enough room in a rescue to take all these Thoroughbreds. And, unfortunately, a lot of these Thoroughbreds are broken down because of a claiming system that allowed that to happen. They can’t re-home a lot of them. They need to go to a sanctuary, where they can retire forever, and when they’re 5 or 6 years old, that’s a lot of time.
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Yours is an unflinching look at the racing industry, but in many respects, you paint a sympathetic picture of many of the people working in it - especially those scrabbling to make a living within the sport. When I read the book, I was reminded of something owner Maggi Moss once told me, about how racing could be headed back to its ‘Sport of Kings’ roots, when only those with large disposable incomes could afford to own racehorses.
When you live paycheck to paycheck, it encourages bad behavior by some. You’ve got to do right by you and your family. Sometimes, that’s by doing wrong in other things. But that’s an interesting debate: should horse racing be an elitist sport or not? You could argue that’s what it is in this country, in the UK. Here, horseracing is a hobby. The majority of people will not make money out of racing in the UK, not as owners. No way.
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