A horse race is a competition in which horses compete against each other for victory. In order to qualify for a race, horses must have a pedigree that includes a father and mother who are both purebred members of the same breed. The races themselves vary in both distance and type. They can be flat, such as a straight race, or hilly, such as a steeplechase. The horse race is the oldest competitive sport in history, and it has been around for more than three thousand years.
The process of a horse race begins with the jockeys, or riders, weighing in before entering the paddock, which is where the horses wait for their trainers to saddle them. Then the horses are paraded past the stewards before beginning their race. During the course of a race, a steward and patrol judge, aided by a video camera, are watching for rule infractions. The stewards will also check the horses’ weights, which are adjusted for age, distance, sex and time of year. In addition, saliva and urine samples are taken from the horses to check for the presence of illegal drugs.
As a result of these and other issues, there are those who oppose horse racing, including a growing number of animal rights advocates. Some of these groups organize demonstrations, such as the ones held on most weekends at Laurel and Pimlico, to protest the cruelty inflicted on the horses. The protesters also point out that horse racing is often covered by the news media in a way that does not always focus on policy issues and instead highlights who is winning or losing. This type of coverage is referred to as horse race reporting.
In the past, it was difficult to make money off a horse race, but the advent of pari-mutuel betting in the early 1900s led to the sport becoming more popular. The popularity of great horses like Man o’ War (widely regarded as one of the greatest racehorses of all time) also helped to boost interest in the sport.
Today, however, the horses are still dying at a staggering rate as a result of the exorbitant physical stress they endure during races and training. The deaths of Eight Belles and Medina Spirit, along with the thousands of other horses who suffer in this for-profit industry, should spark a thorough ideological reckoning on the macro business and industry level about whether or not racing’s interests are best served by taking some complicated, expensive and untraditional steps to protect these majestic animals.
If the industry really wants to help its horses, it must restructure from top to bottom and prioritize the horses at every stage of the decision making process. That would mean putting in place measures that include caps on the number of times a horse can be run and instituting a more natural and equine friendly lifestyle for the horses. This is not a radical idea, but it will require an enormous amount of money and a major rethinking of the fundamentals of the business.