The Melbourne Cup without blinkers
Black Beauty and other horse books filled my book shelf as a child and I learned to ride at a weekend camp with my best friend when I was ten. Horses were everything. I was twelve when I last rode and decades later I still struggle to understand how I ever felt entitled to saddle up and sit on a horse’s back, force a piece of metal into their mouth and try to bend their actions to my will, all while claiming to love them.
“The horse has a very sensitive mouth and yet we do some pretty violent things to the horse and also deny it its voice,” said animal welfare and behaviour scientist Professor Paul McGreevy at an RSPCA seminar in 2023.
Each year when our school classes stopped to watch the Melbourne Cup on TV, I was as excited as everyone else. But with my once dreamy, blinkered vision now clear, I flinch when I see humans whipping stressed, tired horses, already pushed beyond their limits.
The evidence is clear that whipping horses causes pain. As Dr Di Evans from RSPCA Australia commented recently, “slow speed video has shown skin indentations where horses have been whipped with considerable force, and there can really be no dispute that this has to hurt.” Professor McGreevy has also noted that “even though horses have thick skin, that thickness is under the sensitive layer. The number of nerve endings per square unit of area in horse skin and human skin is remarkably similar.”
For a long time the images and narratives pushed by mainstream media outlets, which also promote and profit from the racing industry, have helped build and maintain horse racing myths and illusions, creating a deep chasm between the realities of a racehorse’s unnatural life and the perception of the general public. But cracks in the fairy tale foundations have been obvious for a while now, with many Australians facing up to the inevitable suffering at the heart of horse racing.
Technology and social media in particular have emerged as powerful tools for shifting perceptions and exposing the ugliness of horse sports more widely. Photographer Crispin Parelius Johannessen recently documented pain in horses competing in European equestrian events and says that while traditional media may avoid showing the uglier, more detailed, images now available with new technology, “what happens then with social media is this totally explodes and it’s a total power shake up of who shows the horse.”
As I write this, I am also sharing close up images on social media, easily accessed on the internet, of distressed racehorses, including welt marks on 2019 Melbourne Cup winner Vow and Declare, likely to have been caused by the whip.
The Melbourne Cup is just one of many races each year where horses are regularly injured and killed. The recently released annual Deathwatch report from the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses (CPR) reveals the deaths of 151 thoroughbred racehorses on Australian racetracks in the 2023/24 season — that means, on average, at least one horse died every 2.4 days. These are just the deaths CPR can confirm and represent the tip of a brutal industry where many deaths and injuries remain concealed.
“As the nation prepares to get into party mode for the Melbourne Cup, people need to know they are actually ‘celebrating’ the maiming and murder of magnificent, highly intelligent and sensitive animals on an industrial scale,” says Elio Celotto from CPR.
Deaths detailed in CPR’s report this year include: San Remo who was killed in January following a training injury. Two year old Ava’s Gypsy, killed after an injury to her hind leg at her first race at Toowoomba in March. Capital Meg was just three years old when she suffered a compound fracture during a Gympie race in April. Also in April, four year old Imalovaboy was found to be lame after he won his race and was euthanised after a vet examination the next day. Two year old Broken Promises was declared deceased on arrival at the vet after sustaining a serious injury during her second race in May. Lauriscus died after her first race in Kyneton in November 2023. Latte Partae suffered a catastrophic heart failure and died during her first race in August after “the stress on her two year old body became too much.”
The least visible aspects of horse racing are often the most concerning. As CPR points out, many racehorses are killed when they are no longer commercially viable — “they simply disappear” — and one-third to one half of the 4–6,000 thoroughbred foals registered each year never even make it to the racetrack.
At a recent NSW Rosehill Racecourse inquiry hearing, equine veterinary surgeon of 54 years, Peter Kerkenezov, said in his evidence that lameness accounts for most of the problems with racehorses and he often sees horses that shouldn’t be racing, “I would say that I could go into a stable and probably pull out half the horses, which are unfit to race.”
Carolyn McDonald, a former stablehand with Racing NSW, told the hearing she “witnessed firsthand the mental, emotional and physical suffering of thoroughbred racehorses kept in stables for up to 23 hours a day.” Dr Paul McGreevy told the inquiry, “these amazing animals are bred to run, but we don’t want them just kicking around a paddock and burning off energy without our say-so. So we put them in stables and we feed them concentrated diets… then members of our profession are asked to sedate the animals to make them manageable.”
Not included in the CPR report is the death of Black Caviar who died last August after giving birth to her ninth foal, who also died a few days later. Black Caviar’s death has since drawn attention to the post-racing “careers” of champion racehorses as breeders.
Post Doctoral Fellow at Charles Sturt University, Dr Cathrynne Henshall, recently compared the mating process at studs with “in the wild” where a mare would be free to refuse the stallion’s advances, including by “kicking and biting him or galloping away.” By contrast, at the stud, the mare may be fitted with equipment that limits her movements and her foreleg may also be held up “while the stallion mounts to further restrict her ability to avoid the stallion,” Henshall writes. A “twitch” device — a loop of string or rope twisted tightly around the upper lip — may also be used.
Dr Henshall also points to the racing industry’s reliance on a continual supply of young horses for the age-restricted races offering the biggest prizes, creating “a huge incentive to keep breeding, which adds more pressure on horses like Black Caviar to produce offspring, even as the mare ages and the risks of poor outcomes increases.”
Concern for non-human animals in Australia is clearly on the rise and the recognition of animals as complex, sentient beings, capable of feeling emotions, suffering, and forming friendships, has exposed many past and current practices as cruel and unethical. Horse racing, along with the equally unethical and cruel racing of greyhounds, is high on the list of so-called sports many Australians would like to see banned.
The Melbourne Cup will run as usual next Tuesday, the money and alcohol will still flow, but the pretty frocks and hats can no longer provide cover for this cruel and ugly form of gambling. Like many other Australians, I will again be saying Nup to the Cup this year and hoping all the horses running will at least leave the track alive and uninjured.
