“The public is peeling back the curtain and seeing horse racing for what it is: a story of suffering, where innocent animals are the victims” - Read Nina Copleston-Hawkens’ letter in this week’s Dublin People...
Grand National suffering
Dublin People, 16 April 2025
Deur Editor,
Last week was The Grand National Meeting - a horse-racing event marketed as "sport's greatest story". In reality, it is a hellish nightmare.
A four-year-old horse named Willy De Houelle was killed during the second race on the first day and many other innocent animals suffered falls, injuries and traumas. During the climactic "Grand National” race on Saturday, Celebre d'Allen collapsed and Broadway Boy suffered a horrific fall at the 25th fence. Instead of updating the anxious public on Broadway Boy's wellbeing, the industry spouted empty rhetoric about “how well the horses are cared for”.
These sickening scenes displayed the insidious “welfare washing” which tries to divert public attention away from the horses' suffering, and onto the fairy-tale facade the industry labours to maintain. But the industry knows their days are numbered - the public is peeling back the curtain and seeing horse racing for what it is: a story of suffering, where innocent animals are the victims.
Horses dying, being repeatedly struck with a whip, collapsing from exhaustion, being forced to wear excruciating “aids” (such as painful metal bits in their mouths) and suffering injuries - all to the backdrop of flowing alcohol and raucous crowds - is repulsive. And this is just the visible suffering - behind closed doors, horses are facing gruelling training regimes, being used as breeding machines, and at risk of being discarded once no longer profitable. 598 horses from the racing industry were sent to slaughter in 2024.
Please never bet on an animal's life and find out more by heading to www.animalaid.org.uk/horse-racing
Nina Copleston-Hawkens
Campaigns Manager, Animal Aid
Find out more about fatalities at UK racecourses at
https://www.horsedeathwatch.com/
Find out more about fatalities at Irish racecourses at
http://www.irishhorsedeathwatch.com/