A horse race is a sport where horses are forced to run at speeds far above their natural capabilities. This causes debilitating injuries to the horses, such as bleeding lungs and fractured backs. They are also abused with whips and illegal electric shock devices to keep them going faster. These abused animals don’t enjoy racing and are not happy with their lives. They end every race exhausted, with painful and debilitating injuries, if they are lucky enough to finish. Then they are slaughtered and sold for food.
A few horses do have a chance to lead a normal life after retiring from racing. But for most, that’s not the case. Most are sent to slaughterhouses in countries such as Canada, Mexico, and Japan where they are used for glue and dog food. Some are even boiled alive and used for human consumption in places such as France and Japan.
The exploitation of these magnificent creatures is not only illegal but immoral. It is time to stop supporting this cruel and abusive industry. Instead, if you like to place bets, make sure to place your money on football games or any other sports that treat their players as willing athletes rather than mistreated animals.
In the wild, horses love to move fast – it comes naturally to them – but they do not want to win races. They are prey animals, and prefer to stay together and protect each other as a group. Winning a race, however, requires them to break apart from the pack and get ahead of their competitors. To achieve this, the horses are encouaged to run faster by using a variety of methods, including drugging them to mask pain and abuse with whips. Injuries are common, and many of them are fatal.
During a race, a horse’s heartbeat can increase tenfold from 25 beats per minute to an excessive 250 beats, leading to extreme exhaustion and collapse. Injuries are very common, with one in every 22 races ending with a catastrophic injury and three thoroughbreds dying on the track every day. This is a very dangerous and unnatural sport, yet it is widely accepted as a thrilling spectator event.
Journalists often report elections as a horse race, with stories focused on two candidates chasing each other in the polls to the detriment of third-party or primary contenders. This research, based on a study of newspaper coverage of the 2004 and 2008 elections for governor and U.S. senator, found that papers with corporate owners were more likely to use the horse-race framework of reporting than those owned by individual editors. While this horse-race journalism has serious consequences for democracy, we can change the way we cover elections by focusing on policy and providing complete context to our readers.