I've never been a fan of horse racing, or for other futurity competitive horse events where young, physical immature horses are rode. You may think a three year old if mature enough to race or compete in physical tasking events, but that 3 year old began training well before becoming 3 in order to be competitive and therefore incurring damage, sometimes long lasting, or the injuries, sometimes life ending that a immature body can't handle. I don't think anyone wants to break down and hurt horses, but the pressure to get these horses on the pay roll (to earn money for the owners) is great.
Repetitive impact at a gallop with 3 times (or more) the load of a horse's body weight can cause skeletal fractures, connective and soft tissue injuries, such as ruptured tendons, development of painful bone spurs, and inflammation of the tendon endings and stress on the joints (creating arthritis) which will plague a horse throughout his lifetime.
When I ran a large public barn the local race track would call me and ask me to post notices on horses being given away, as it's much cheaper to give a horse away than it is to euthanize it or get it transported to a kill facility. These horses were almost always injured in some way. There was one horse, an older TB gelding who was a companion horse, that was the exception. But the rule of thumb was that there was a hidden reason for trying to home a horse. In one severe case, one of my boarders brought in a free three year old TB who had collapsed suspensory ligaments on his front left leg where the fetlock was set well behind the heel of the hoof - so apparent it was mind numbing that the boarder took him to make into a team roping horse.
The racing industry is well known for using anti-inflammatory drugs so a horse can continue training or even race. Pin firing, to burn a horse's injured tissue and therefore create a more serious inflammatory response to aid healing, can be used legitimately, but it is used when the horse is already injured and in the case of a bowed tendon, it is likely to come back again. The chances of sustaining suspensory ligament damage, soft connective tissue injuries, not to mention other physical aliments that comes with intense training on physically immature frames is just too big a risk for me to ask a horse to accept. So makes me angry when I read a news feed that 21 horses, that's twenty one, have died since Christmas time at Santa Anita Park in Los Angeles, California. It appears that most, if not all of the horses, were put down after sustaining bad injuries. Some of the race track people are attributing the great increase in injuries (and deaths) to the condition of the track caused by excessive rains. Well, those horse's didn't ask to be ridden and trained on less than safe ground. Again human's fail horses.
I am also no fan of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) who is protesting for the closure of the race track, but I hope something is done. I would rather there be some organizational self correction where a older age for racing horses is adopted and strictly enforced, something like the Endurance Racing organization use.
I am linking an article from the Washington Post here.
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