The Grand National was today and I noticed that the BBC broadcasted it under BBC Sport. That’d be nice and all if it was actually a sport! Horse-racing just isn’t a sport, why do so many people pretend that it is?
All horse-racing exists for is to generate cash by allowing people to bet on which horse they think will win. For this reason horse-racing is here to stay because money is far more important than the welfare of humans never mind animals.
Just because people bet on it does not constitute it as a sport. I’ve already written about this in the past and summed up my argument with this paragraph:
“The fact is, if the government put a blanket ban on betting on all sports, horse-riding would die overnight. Football wouldn’t. Rugby wouldn’t. Nor would any other real sport. Horse-riding exists for one purpose, betting on it. Have you been in a betting shop recently? It’s depressing. All you find is a tatty old man clutching the Racing Post looking desperately at a television as his horse tumbles over and takes a bullet right between the eyes. His life’s become so desolate you feel it’s him that deserves the bullet. Put the poor guy out of his misery.”
Again: NOT A SPORT.
Why don’t they do something to actually make it a sport? Get rid of the fences and the whips so no horse has to needlessly suffer, give the rider a bow and arrow and have him hit targets as he goes round the course. That would be a sport, involving skill and precision rather just involving the ability be a short-arse and whip.
The thing that annoys me most about horse racing is the horrid treatment of horses. Considering that the human race has been progressed considerably by horses only exacerbates the cruelty further. We should respect horses for all they’ve done for us. Where were we before cars were invented? How in the world have we been farming crops all these generations? And what about the thousands of horses who were killed in the First World War?
Instead of treating them with the respect they deserve we ridicule them with silly names and then force them to run around an oval while whipping them ferociously until they tumble over a fence and die.
It’s animal cruelty, plain and simple, and should not be recognised as a sport. Foxhunting isn’t a sport and neither is horse-racing. You wouldn’t condone a sport involving punting a cat as far as you can would you? Or maybe one where you swing a lemur around by the tail like a shot-put and see how far into the distance you can fling it.
Everyone says that these horses get treated superbly, and they’re right, of course they do, they’re worth a lot of money but does that make it okay to send them out to die for the entertainment of the masses? It’s like The Hunger Games where they dress them all up and pamper them only to send them out into the arena to be killed for the enjoyment of rich folk.
I’m all for putting down an animal that is suffering, but when that suffering has been caused by us it just makes no sense to me. Horses die at the Grand National every year and all the horse-racing ‘experts’ talk about how sad it is.
Well here’s an idea: stop bloody doing it! It’s not a sport and it’s certainly not entertainment.
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