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06 Apr 13
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The Grand National is an iconic event – but it also kills horses with alarming regularity. This year's meet has already seen two deaths, and fresh protests. So does the race have a future?
Stephen Moss
Guardian.co.uk
My early-morning train to Aintree is delayed by a dog on the track. The dog – a large, shaggy, bemused-looking grey mongrel – has to be caught, put on a rope and led to safety by a man in a high-vis jacket. None of the freezing passengers complains at the inconvenience. We are British after all: a nation of animal lovers, doggie devotees, more certain of our affection for creatures on four legs than two.
And this is why every year, in early spring, the same controversy erupts. Should the Grand National take place? Is it racing's supreme challenge – nearly 4.5 miles, 30 fences, 40 runners – or Britain's answer to bullfighting, a cruel spectacle put on for the dubious edification of 70,000 racegoers and an estimated TV audience across the world of 600 million? Is it sport or barbarity? Does it really have a place in the 21st century?
This year the arguments between the pro- and anti-National factions have been especially heated. Two horses, including the Cheltenham Gold Cup-winning Synchronised, died in the race last year; two more had died the year before. This is powerful ammunition for the National haters, who claim the tide of public opinion is turning.
Aintree has responded by modifying the fences, making them less rigid, more forgiving. The drop on the landing side of the famed/infamous (delete according to taste) Becher's Brook has been reduced – an unseen, unexpected ditch has long been deemed unfair to the horses – and there is now a shorter run to the first fence to take the horses away from the noise of the grandstand, and give them less time to gather momentum.
The Aintree authorities are, however, in a bind. Whatever they do will never be enough to satisfy critics of the race, who want it banned. And every change they make offends the traditionalists, who argue that the race's uniqueness resides in its degree of difficulty. Reduce the field and the length, strip away the peculiar features of the fences – the height of The Chair, the fearsomeness of Becher's, the sharpness of the Canal Turn – and you are left with a bog-standard three-mile chase that might as well be run at Huntingdon on a wet Wednesday. The National became a cultural phenomenon – a truly national event – because of its bizarreness. The question is whether the steady wastage of horses' lives is a price worth paying to preserve this 175-year-old rite.
The racing fraternity have been eloquent this week in their advocacy of the great race, and none more so than Jonjo O'Neill, the twinkling, much-loved jockey-turned trainer responsible for the ill-fated Synchronised. "We're all doing this job because we love the horses," he said, "but sometimes we are being put in the same bracket as murderers. Some of the things said about us are a bloody insult – as if we are animals ourselves."
Katie Walsh, one of the top female jockeys and third last year on Seabass, said in an interview with the Radio Times, "I hope to God there are no accidents this year but these things happen, and they're horses at the end of the day. They're so well looked after. Better than some children."
It was perhaps inevitable that Walsh should be aboard a horse that died over the new National fences on Thursday, the first day of the Aintree meeting. Battlefront, trained by her father, Ted, who won the National with Papillon in 2000, collapsed and died during the race. I speak to Dene Stansall, horse racing consultant to anti-racing lobby group Animal Aid, moments later, and he is quick to point up the irony. "We've just seen a race round the Grand National course where another horse's life has been taken," he says, "and it was ridden by Katie Walsh who's been saying they're only horses after all."
No amount of "tinkering" with the National fences will satisfy Stansall. "The Grand National course should be removed from Aintree," he insists. "We don't want races over these fences. Two horses fell at Becher's Brook [in Thursday's Fox Hunters' Chase]. The issue with that fence hasn't been resolved. There's clearly still a problem, and it's just luck that they got up again. There needs to be a proper welfare audit of the course."
Stansall insists the anti-Nationals are winning the battle. "We did an NOP poll last year and one back in 2003 and there was a 14% swing: 43% in 2003 thought it was cruel and in 2012 57%. You always used to have the winner of the Grand National on the front page on newspapers; now it's pictures of dead horses. That's what's making news now."
He has a point. The photograph of a dead horse under tarpaulin as the rest of the field streamed past in the 2011 race must have made many casual followers question their commitment to the race. Rarely can life and death have been so vividly juxtaposed. A moment before, Dooneys Gate was jumping as if his life depended on it. It did.
Stansall cites what appear to be a killer set of statistics – over the past five years, 944 horses have died on the 60 racecourses in the UK. His point is that the National is just the most dangerous event in a sport that is inherently destructive. But statistics are slippery things. In the wake of Battlefront's death, John Baker, regional director of the Jockey Club and de facto chief executive of Aintree, offers his own interpretation of those figures. "You can never remove all risk from horseracing, as with any sport," he says. "However, welfare standards are very high, and equine fatalities are rare, with 90,000 runners each year and a fatality rate of 0.2%." The problem for Baker is that each of those 0.2% is a once-vivid, hard-trying animal now laid out under tarpaulin.
Stansall, who makes no bones about the fact that he would ultimately like to see all racing outlawed, says there will be a peaceful protest ahead of today's race (the Aintree authorities fear something more disruptive). "If there is any trouble, it won't be from us," he insists. "We think the change has to come from the swell of public opinion and from legislation. You have to take self-regulation away from an industry that has no respect for horses used, abused and thrown out the other end. The debate about horse welfare is now on the agenda in a way it wasn't 10 or 15 years ago. This issue won't go away."
Animal Aid and its representatives are not welcome at Aintree. A small knot of their supporters will today stand at the entrance to the course hammering home their message: "You Bet, They Die." The RSPCA takes a different view. They have decided to work for change from within, and immediately before racing on Friday, I meet its equine consultant, David Muir, resplendent in a green tweed suit and still puffing from having walked the course. "I check the fences and if I see something wrong, that's the time I say something," he explains.
Muir takes the pragmatic view that racing isn't going to disappear, so the RSPCA needs to get involved to make it as safe as possible. He describes his role as that of a "critical friend" and says, "the National is an iconic race. It's got this wonderful Liverpudlian atmosphere, which is unique in the world. It's got the distance, the fences, it brings the community together; it's a race that we should all be saying, 'What can we do to make it palatable?'" He believes the answer to safety concerns is to reduce the size of the field from the current maximum of 40, though so far the British Horseracing Authority has spurned his suggestion.
Is the race safer now, despite four deaths in two years? "It's more welfare-orientated," he says. "Safety is a word that I'm very careful about using. You can't have a safe racecourse. Racing is a legitimate enterprise," he adds, "and unless you get a massive public upsurge wanting to ban it, which I can't see, then really, the only way to get rid of racing is through parliament, and I don't see that happening either."
World Horse Welfare agrees with the RSPCA. "Proud to promote the responsible use of horses in sport," says the slogan on the front of its stall at Aintree. "We've been working with Aintree to improve the safety of the National as much as possible," says field officer John Cunningham, "and the race has our qualified support. We would like to see sensible improvements to safety, while maintaining the character of the race." One statistic worries Cunningham, however. In most jump races, 10% of the runners fall; in the National, a whopping 46% fail to finish. But he hopes the new, softer fence cores and other modifications will change that, and argues that the historical significance of the race and its economic importance to the north-west make it worth preserving if safety can be improved.
There are, though, plenty of people on the course who reckon the race could be killed by kindness. "The National has kept its popular appeal," says bookies' assistant Mel Illingworth, "but if you mess with it any more, it might not. They go on about horses' safety, but you get them breaking a leg on the flat, and they live like royalty. It's about right as it is – it's still hard enough – but make it any easier and it would just become like any other race."
"When you come, you just see the fun side," says one member of a hen party at Aintree's version of Ladies' Day. "You don't realise the danger of it. We're mainly here for the fashion."
Does Liverpool still love the National? "They wouldn't sell it out every year if people had fallen out of love with it," says Rachael Cole, here with her friend Faye Emery from Wigan.
The National was in crisis in the 1970s and itself close to being put under tarpaulins, but triple-winner Red Rum saved it, and the past 30 years have been good to the race. Now it has reached another fork in the road, its own version of the Canal Turn.
The BBC has given up on racing (more on the grounds of economy than sqeamishness), and Channel 4 has taken over the reins for the National this year. If audiences fall dramatically, some might again start to question the future of the race. This is also the last year it will be backed by its long-time sponsor, brewers John Smith's, and no new sponsor has yet been announced. Potential backers will be waiting to see the outcome of today's race. No one wants to be associated with dead horseflesh.
The bookmakers insist there are no signs of a decline in the public's appetite. "The volume of betting on the Grand National has gone up every year in the 41 years I've worked for William Hill," says the firm's media relations director, Graham Sharpe. "It's an iconic event known to virtually everyone of betting age in the country."
Rory Scott of Paddy Power anticipates £300m will be punted on the race – a slight rise on last year – and that 30 million people in the UK and Ireland will place bets. That seems unlikely, but if the figure is anywhere near that, then Stansall's belief that the public is steadily turning against the race seems wishful.
Others, though, are less sanguine. "The National is in big trouble," says one industry insider who asked to remain anonymous. "Nothing will placate the antis, and the RSPCA are determined to kill off the race as we know it." The racegoers were already reeling when the Topham Chase was run over the National fences yesterday afternoon. It was noticeable how the police presence increased as the day wore on and the drink made itself felt. But it remained good-humoured, and the only incident looked as if it would be a man being stretchered away when he collapsed during the race.
But those fences – even in their new, softer incarnation – are not to be underestimated. They still pose a lethal threat, and how the public responds to that danger will determine whether the race lives or dies. At the 15th fence in a race run over just one circuit of the National course, the classy 11-year-old Little Josh (one of the favourites, and a horse described by industry bible the Racing Post as a "thrilling frontrunner when on song") took a crashing fall. He broke a shoulder and had to be put down.
A few minutes later, in the hubbub of the weighing room, I asked Little Josh's trainer, Nigel Twiston-Davies, what it means to lose a horse in those circumstances, and whether such fatalities would ultimately undermine the public's affection for the National. "He went out doing what he enjoyed," says Twiston-Davies. "It doesn't change anything. You could have a prang in the car on the way home. Where there's life, there's death. That's just the way it is."
Stephen Moss
Guardian.co.uk
My early-morning train to Aintree is delayed by a dog on the track. The dog – a large, shaggy, bemused-looking grey mongrel – has to be caught, put on a rope and led to safety by a man in a high-vis jacket. None of the freezing passengers complains at the inconvenience. We are British after all: a nation of animal lovers, doggie devotees, more certain of our affection for creatures on four legs than two.
And this is why every year, in early spring, the same controversy erupts. Should the Grand National take place? Is it racing's supreme challenge – nearly 4.5 miles, 30 fences, 40 runners – or Britain's answer to bullfighting, a cruel spectacle put on for the dubious edification of 70,000 racegoers and an estimated TV audience across the world of 600 million? Is it sport or barbarity? Does it really have a place in the 21st century?
This year the arguments between the pro- and anti-National factions have been especially heated. Two horses, including the Cheltenham Gold Cup-winning Synchronised, died in the race last year; two more had died the year before. This is powerful ammunition for the National haters, who claim the tide of public opinion is turning.
Aintree has responded by modifying the fences, making them less rigid, more forgiving. The drop on the landing side of the famed/infamous (delete according to taste) Becher's Brook has been reduced – an unseen, unexpected ditch has long been deemed unfair to the horses – and there is now a shorter run to the first fence to take the horses away from the noise of the grandstand, and give them less time to gather momentum.
The Aintree authorities are, however, in a bind. Whatever they do will never be enough to satisfy critics of the race, who want it banned. And every change they make offends the traditionalists, who argue that the race's uniqueness resides in its degree of difficulty. Reduce the field and the length, strip away the peculiar features of the fences – the height of The Chair, the fearsomeness of Becher's, the sharpness of the Canal Turn – and you are left with a bog-standard three-mile chase that might as well be run at Huntingdon on a wet Wednesday. The National became a cultural phenomenon – a truly national event – because of its bizarreness. The question is whether the steady wastage of horses' lives is a price worth paying to preserve this 175-year-old rite.
The racing fraternity have been eloquent this week in their advocacy of the great race, and none more so than Jonjo O'Neill, the twinkling, much-loved jockey-turned trainer responsible for the ill-fated Synchronised. "We're all doing this job because we love the horses," he said, "but sometimes we are being put in the same bracket as murderers. Some of the things said about us are a bloody insult – as if we are animals ourselves."
Katie Walsh, one of the top female jockeys and third last year on Seabass, said in an interview with the Radio Times, "I hope to God there are no accidents this year but these things happen, and they're horses at the end of the day. They're so well looked after. Better than some children."
It was perhaps inevitable that Walsh should be aboard a horse that died over the new National fences on Thursday, the first day of the Aintree meeting. Battlefront, trained by her father, Ted, who won the National with Papillon in 2000, collapsed and died during the race. I speak to Dene Stansall, horse racing consultant to anti-racing lobby group Animal Aid, moments later, and he is quick to point up the irony. "We've just seen a race round the Grand National course where another horse's life has been taken," he says, "and it was ridden by Katie Walsh who's been saying they're only horses after all."
No amount of "tinkering" with the National fences will satisfy Stansall. "The Grand National course should be removed from Aintree," he insists. "We don't want races over these fences. Two horses fell at Becher's Brook [in Thursday's Fox Hunters' Chase]. The issue with that fence hasn't been resolved. There's clearly still a problem, and it's just luck that they got up again. There needs to be a proper welfare audit of the course."
Stansall insists the anti-Nationals are winning the battle. "We did an NOP poll last year and one back in 2003 and there was a 14% swing: 43% in 2003 thought it was cruel and in 2012 57%. You always used to have the winner of the Grand National on the front page on newspapers; now it's pictures of dead horses. That's what's making news now."
He has a point. The photograph of a dead horse under tarpaulin as the rest of the field streamed past in the 2011 race must have made many casual followers question their commitment to the race. Rarely can life and death have been so vividly juxtaposed. A moment before, Dooneys Gate was jumping as if his life depended on it. It did.
Stansall cites what appear to be a killer set of statistics – over the past five years, 944 horses have died on the 60 racecourses in the UK. His point is that the National is just the most dangerous event in a sport that is inherently destructive. But statistics are slippery things. In the wake of Battlefront's death, John Baker, regional director of the Jockey Club and de facto chief executive of Aintree, offers his own interpretation of those figures. "You can never remove all risk from horseracing, as with any sport," he says. "However, welfare standards are very high, and equine fatalities are rare, with 90,000 runners each year and a fatality rate of 0.2%." The problem for Baker is that each of those 0.2% is a once-vivid, hard-trying animal now laid out under tarpaulin.
Stansall, who makes no bones about the fact that he would ultimately like to see all racing outlawed, says there will be a peaceful protest ahead of today's race (the Aintree authorities fear something more disruptive). "If there is any trouble, it won't be from us," he insists. "We think the change has to come from the swell of public opinion and from legislation. You have to take self-regulation away from an industry that has no respect for horses used, abused and thrown out the other end. The debate about horse welfare is now on the agenda in a way it wasn't 10 or 15 years ago. This issue won't go away."
Animal Aid and its representatives are not welcome at Aintree. A small knot of their supporters will today stand at the entrance to the course hammering home their message: "You Bet, They Die." The RSPCA takes a different view. They have decided to work for change from within, and immediately before racing on Friday, I meet its equine consultant, David Muir, resplendent in a green tweed suit and still puffing from having walked the course. "I check the fences and if I see something wrong, that's the time I say something," he explains.
Muir takes the pragmatic view that racing isn't going to disappear, so the RSPCA needs to get involved to make it as safe as possible. He describes his role as that of a "critical friend" and says, "the National is an iconic race. It's got this wonderful Liverpudlian atmosphere, which is unique in the world. It's got the distance, the fences, it brings the community together; it's a race that we should all be saying, 'What can we do to make it palatable?'" He believes the answer to safety concerns is to reduce the size of the field from the current maximum of 40, though so far the British Horseracing Authority has spurned his suggestion.
Is the race safer now, despite four deaths in two years? "It's more welfare-orientated," he says. "Safety is a word that I'm very careful about using. You can't have a safe racecourse. Racing is a legitimate enterprise," he adds, "and unless you get a massive public upsurge wanting to ban it, which I can't see, then really, the only way to get rid of racing is through parliament, and I don't see that happening either."
World Horse Welfare agrees with the RSPCA. "Proud to promote the responsible use of horses in sport," says the slogan on the front of its stall at Aintree. "We've been working with Aintree to improve the safety of the National as much as possible," says field officer John Cunningham, "and the race has our qualified support. We would like to see sensible improvements to safety, while maintaining the character of the race." One statistic worries Cunningham, however. In most jump races, 10% of the runners fall; in the National, a whopping 46% fail to finish. But he hopes the new, softer fence cores and other modifications will change that, and argues that the historical significance of the race and its economic importance to the north-west make it worth preserving if safety can be improved.
There are, though, plenty of people on the course who reckon the race could be killed by kindness. "The National has kept its popular appeal," says bookies' assistant Mel Illingworth, "but if you mess with it any more, it might not. They go on about horses' safety, but you get them breaking a leg on the flat, and they live like royalty. It's about right as it is – it's still hard enough – but make it any easier and it would just become like any other race."
"When you come, you just see the fun side," says one member of a hen party at Aintree's version of Ladies' Day. "You don't realise the danger of it. We're mainly here for the fashion."
Does Liverpool still love the National? "They wouldn't sell it out every year if people had fallen out of love with it," says Rachael Cole, here with her friend Faye Emery from Wigan.
The National was in crisis in the 1970s and itself close to being put under tarpaulins, but triple-winner Red Rum saved it, and the past 30 years have been good to the race. Now it has reached another fork in the road, its own version of the Canal Turn.
The BBC has given up on racing (more on the grounds of economy than sqeamishness), and Channel 4 has taken over the reins for the National this year. If audiences fall dramatically, some might again start to question the future of the race. This is also the last year it will be backed by its long-time sponsor, brewers John Smith's, and no new sponsor has yet been announced. Potential backers will be waiting to see the outcome of today's race. No one wants to be associated with dead horseflesh.
The bookmakers insist there are no signs of a decline in the public's appetite. "The volume of betting on the Grand National has gone up every year in the 41 years I've worked for William Hill," says the firm's media relations director, Graham Sharpe. "It's an iconic event known to virtually everyone of betting age in the country."
Rory Scott of Paddy Power anticipates £300m will be punted on the race – a slight rise on last year – and that 30 million people in the UK and Ireland will place bets. That seems unlikely, but if the figure is anywhere near that, then Stansall's belief that the public is steadily turning against the race seems wishful.
Others, though, are less sanguine. "The National is in big trouble," says one industry insider who asked to remain anonymous. "Nothing will placate the antis, and the RSPCA are determined to kill off the race as we know it." The racegoers were already reeling when the Topham Chase was run over the National fences yesterday afternoon. It was noticeable how the police presence increased as the day wore on and the drink made itself felt. But it remained good-humoured, and the only incident looked as if it would be a man being stretchered away when he collapsed during the race.
But those fences – even in their new, softer incarnation – are not to be underestimated. They still pose a lethal threat, and how the public responds to that danger will determine whether the race lives or dies. At the 15th fence in a race run over just one circuit of the National course, the classy 11-year-old Little Josh (one of the favourites, and a horse described by industry bible the Racing Post as a "thrilling frontrunner when on song") took a crashing fall. He broke a shoulder and had to be put down.
A few minutes later, in the hubbub of the weighing room, I asked Little Josh's trainer, Nigel Twiston-Davies, what it means to lose a horse in those circumstances, and whether such fatalities would ultimately undermine the public's affection for the National. "He went out doing what he enjoyed," says Twiston-Davies. "It doesn't change anything. You could have a prang in the car on the way home. Where there's life, there's death. That's just the way it is."
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interesting reading I often look at www.horsedeathwatch.com but then wondered if the horses were not running would they be alive anyway, would the thoroughbreds bred for racing even be alive? also I went to a three day event recently and a horse broke his leg and put down. also been to point to point with fatalities its just the nature of the sport.
bullfighting is barbaric and the bull allways dies, Ive seen bullfights on tv in spain where the bull isnt fit enough to run into the ring as they stab them before entering the ring.
I know its sad when a horse or any animal dies but at least most of the grand national runners survive.
bullfighting is barbaric and the bull allways dies, Ive seen bullfights on tv in spain where the bull isnt fit enough to run into the ring as they stab them before entering the ring.
I know its sad when a horse or any animal dies but at least most of the grand national runners survive.
The facts that the race day is always a sell-out, aprox 600m tune in world wide to view the great race & that it is by some way the biggest betting race ever anywhere on the planet, will hold a lot of sway for the future of the race (horse deaths or not) lets all hope its not the case this year.
Sadly with the loss of 2 horses already this wk over the national fences, if any more happen 2day, then it will give the do-godders more fuel for the fire that has been gathering smoke for the last few years.
Fingers X & everthing else that both jocks & horses ALL come home safe & sound 2day.
Even more so with one of my bets in 1st place
Sadly with the loss of 2 horses already this wk over the national fences, if any more happen 2day, then it will give the do-godders more fuel for the fire that has been gathering smoke for the last few years.
Fingers X & everthing else that both jocks & horses ALL come home safe & sound 2day.
Even more so with one of my bets in 1st place
horsedeathwatch.com is statistics to support people who want horse racing banned all together, I am not in this category as horses would have little use then and could basically be in danger of extinction, or worse be breed for horse fighting.
But the Grand National is a race that has no place in the sport, the death rates tell you. How people get a trill watching this race is beyond me, it is extremely dangerous, for horse & jockey, and the stats tell you that. And the handicap system means horses whom are not even fit for the race can be thrown in by owners who would be more akin to dog fighting that horse racing.
I have not bet on the race for 5 years now and I pray, for the beautiful horses, this will be the last one.
But the Grand National is a race that has no place in the sport, the death rates tell you. How people get a trill watching this race is beyond me, it is extremely dangerous, for horse & jockey, and the stats tell you that. And the handicap system means horses whom are not even fit for the race can be thrown in by owners who would be more akin to dog fighting that horse racing.
I have not bet on the race for 5 years now and I pray, for the beautiful horses, this will be the last one.
Phil- You are wrong about the handicap system allowing horses who are not fit for the race. The past few years the race has been cursed if you look at the deaths.
McKelvey had been followed by The One Show. Died while loose as did Gold Cup winner Synchronised. According To Pete was highlighted because of him being a family pet. In 2011 the tarpaulin over Ornais body caused uproar.
McKelvey had been followed by The One Show. Died while loose as did Gold Cup winner Synchronised. According To Pete was highlighted because of him being a family pet. In 2011 the tarpaulin over Ornais body caused uproar.
to make a defense for the race saying its "cursed"? surely you have got better than that
I personally find it hard to justify the abuse of lowly intelligent members of the animal world for my entertainment on here
The hypocrisy is overwhelming. As you tuck into your steak, milk or your battery farmed eggs tomorrow you won't even think about how those animals lived and died and the Grand National will be a distant memory until you unveil your bleeding heart again this time next year. You make me want to puke.
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