English people and dead animals

Sorry but having just come in and seen the Aintree fiasco today. It was nothing short of disgusting.

Tony McCoy should have got off the horse, the horse is dead now. Dead a Gold Cup Winner dead. The horse antics beforehand showed he was not in the frame of mind to race. I have never liked McCoy and I always believe he puts his own personal agenda ahead of the horse.

First time ever looking at the national race and trying to justify to myself and others how this is sport. I could not come up with a reason and there lies the tale. Horses die and Horses fall but Horses that refuse to be involved that are being forced to race is barbaric and nothing better than playing russian roulette.

New rules need to be in place, any horse that is loose before a race should not start and any horse that dumps a jockey should not race.

Without sounding barbaric, thorough bred horses are bred to race.  They are of very little use otherwise.  Its a shame that they get killed, but we have seen horses die on the flat lately also.  High profile deaths like we seen today will bring the "green welly brigade" out in force.  Some animals are bred for pets, the wild or zoo's, not race horses!  Everyone knows the risks of running in the national, and if they reduce the field and fence sizes, it will loose its appeal.  It is awful to see animals suffer, but it is a fact of life in this game.  The activists will be out in force at future meetings all over the UK and Ireland soon, and the more chat about it being cruel will just harm racing and a lot of other pursuits.

I was Gant, did I not say the running of Uncle Tom Cobbley is disgraceful.

The fall was not the problem as i said horses fall the in fact hit was after the fall he got up ran away. His mind was completely gone, frazzled and not with it, he injured himself. Now how often does a horse actually kill himself on a racetrack that was not due to a fall at a fence and he never gets up or breaks a leg. Now throw in the fact that the horse was refusing to race today and you got a case of stone cold horse slaughter for the rspca, daily mail etc. All the news is talking about is the death of horses.

Well said........We have enough people trying to stop our rural persuits and to have people going around using the words barbaric and russian roulette doesn't help.

Horse Racing is a sport where horses die for our pleasure. Its what horses do they race etc they are animal. I have no case against Flat or Jumps racing. I do however have a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. Too often we turn a blind eye to what are sport is. I think we need to discuss how to make it safer. The easier way out is not to show dying horses after a fall, hide it from view as the tv companies do now to sell the product. That is not horse racing, trying to astetically cover over the bad parts by hiding it from view.

However Horse Racing is not a global sport watched by millions, the whip was a non issue for me but running horses that are not right to race is wrong. I have no problem with according to peat death as it was a death from a fall but synronised should have not raced today IMHO after his exploits before the race.

Go over to the daily mail and read the top rated comments. 1000s of people agreeing with one that is a "national disgrace". I dont read or take interest in the daily mail but when papers are going to publish all this stuff tommorrow and for horse racing to stick its head in the sand and say "oh well thats racing" is not good.

Greyhounds and Horse Industry in Ireland has disgraced ourselves lately with the death animals left in fields and dumps that one were race horses. I think that is shocking, time for proper measures to be taken on that issue as well.

Also i just noticed its the rightwing papers The Sun and The Daily Mail charging this thing as they did last year. The Guardian full piece from Greg Wood i nearly entirely dedicated to the horses that died. Wood is one of the better journo and he has his finger on the pulse.

Sky News interview the Aintree director about how is this happening and the man luck completely flabbergasted at the questioning.

Big fallout over the week I would imagine and Paul Nicholls Comments after the race will not have helped.

The media boys gotta eat and tragedy and drama sells papers.....we are lucky in Ireland our media only care about politicians and gangland crime.

lads synchronised and mccoy parted company before the race due to a poxy tape that should not have been there... horse trotted around and was so relaxed that ther was nothin to remoteley see that he should have been withdrawn.. just a tragic set of circumstances imho..

We'll drown in political correctness if we're not careful, it won't be long before the drink you have in the pub will be "EVIL"

And these people think they'll live forever, I'm not sure the average age of dieing is but I'm sure you're one of them!, sometime!

FFS Live!!!

Rubyisgodinthesaddle.........Your comments are over the top and the bit you said about AP McCoy is absolute crap and way off the mark.
If that is your opinion of how NH racing operates you are probably better off watching M O'Learys planes than his horses.........only my opinion.

All the connections in the run up to the race were saying the same thing; "as long as they come back safe and sound".  What hypocrisy!  If that was the over riding goal, don't enter them in this race.

Yesterday changed my perspective.  I can't sit back and enjoy an event in which horses die with such regularity.

I can't believe that there won't be big changes ahead of next year.

bogtrotters the lot of ye^ rural pursuits like this eh?         
                                                                                                                   The Irish Greyhound Board has confirmed it has identified the owners of a number of greyhounds, whose decomposing carcasses were found dumped in a disused quarry at Ballyagran, west Limerick, over the Easter weekend. It is believed the dogs were shot in the head and then discarded in contravention of the recently introduced Greyhound Welfare Bill.

Bord na gCon said it was “working with gardaí to bring the offenders to justice” and “condemned” such actions. It added that identification markings on some of the dogs “were still intact” and “the owners of same has already been identified and will now be questioned”.

I get the feeling the English seem to be more concerned in the welfare of the horses than the jockeys. Noel Fehily got his ankle broken, hardly mentioned. Horses are not as important as humans.

My god some of the views on this thread are utterly bizarre

It's true that they are a very kind and sensitive people.

Rocketfingers having another dig at rural Ireland.

Have emailed Betfair to see if they will create a 'Pale Sports Forum'.

oh dear the culchie boggers having a good old whinge

Yeah that's it, i think we're just a nation of moaners at times

Come on rocketfingers did the wildman not explain the pale, the royal county and the high kings at tara to you the other day..........your boys left soccer here so behave.

what party do you support rocket?