Fast facts on the cruelty of horse racing, and fashion’s support of it

Florals, fun and fancy frocks are promised as part of the annual Spring Racing season which sees the horse racing and fashion industries partner up for the sake of profit. Behind the scenes, intense cruelty to horses — who are often sent to knackeries when they’re no longer earning money — is intentionally kept from public view. If you’ve ever considered buying into Spring Racing Fashion, read this first.

The suffering of a racehorse begins at birth

At about 6 months of age, young horses, known as foals, are distressingly separated from their mothers. Then, their training for racing begins. The foal then commences a training regime to prepare them for sale and future racing.

The foal will be “broken” meaning they will be taught to comply with human commands through learned helplessness techniques, which compels them to obey due to fear and pain. The horses that rebel against the oppressive training methods will be forced even more harshly into compliance. They will be deemed rogue horses and discarded — sent to be killed — if they fail to comply. The horses that comply will live for an average of 3 years before being discarded; this is against the average horse lifespan of 20 years [1].

Horses aren’t treated like individuals by this industry, but means to profitable ends.

Winning racehorses don't get the fairytale ending you’d expect

The vast majority of racehorses will be killed after their careers come to an end. After deciding they are no longer profitable, “owners” work to discard a horse as soon as possible, to save them from spending money on expenses like feeding [2].

Many horses are sent to sale yards where most are bought by knackeries, used for pet meat and sometimes even for human consumption [3]. The racing industry does not discriminate when it comes to disposing of “unviable” race horses. An Australian investigation conducted in 2019 found footage of ‘favourite’ racehorse ‘War Ends’ being abused by an abattoir worker before their life was ended by slaughter [4].

Other “successful” racehorses identified at Australian abattoirs for pet and human consumption include:

Absolutely Win (won approximately $20,000 in prize money)

Valtari (won approximately $30,000 in prize money)

Legal Waves (won approximately $40,000 in prize money)

Halo’s Image (won approximately $50,000 in prize money)

Sunny Fame (won approximately $60,000 in prize money)

Vortuka (won approximately $70,000 in prize money)

Startreusse (won approximately $100,000 in prize money)

Explore The World (won approximately $120,000 in prize money)

War Ends (won approximately $390,000 in prize money)

Tahitian Black (won approximately $400,000 in prize money) [5][6].

Spring Fashion is a profitable campaign of the racing industry

For the major Australian department stores, the racing season has long been a crucial revenue driver and key to marketing campaigns in the run-up to Christmas [7]. Citizen consumers across the gender spectrum are willing to fork out hundreds to meet the dress codes of the prestigious racing events. Of the gross economic benefit of the Melbourne Cup Carnival for 2020, $39.1 million was spent on fashion items [8]. The retailers and brands that promote and profit from the racing industry in their spring campaigns are directly profiting from the cruelty of racing events.

The Spring Racing Carnival uses fashion to convince you to support cruelty

Many fashion events during the racing carnival include competitions that award competitors prizes for best dressed, incentivising people to show off their looks in front of the backdrop of a much less colourful and harmless competition that is horse racing. In recent years, given the more normalised acceptance of the cruelty of horse racing, spectators may still justify attending racing events by attending the fashion events themselves [9]. Given that the awareness of the cruelty of horse racing grows every year, the fashion events at the Spring Racing Carnival are an integral part of ensuring that attendance numbers remain steady.

Fashion events at the Spring Racing Carnival were introduced to woo women to the track

While the major focus of the Spring Racing Carnival is the horse races themselves, the Fashion on the Field events take up a significant amount of the limelight. Introduced by the Victorian Racing Club in 1962, ‘Ladies Day’ and the ‘Fashions on the Field’ events draw large crowds to the carnival each year, inciting women to support the cruelty that occurs alongside it [10]. Perhaps more sinister though is Stakes Day, more commonly known as ‘Family Day’, which encourages young men and women to witness normalised cruelty and attend racing events for years to come. This cruelty only compounds, as these gambling-driven horse racing events are tied to increased domestic violence [11].

The Australian horse-racing industry has an overbreeding problem

Photo of horses on a stud farm by Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses

A fundamental factor of the systemic issue of ex-racehorse slaughter is the racing industry’s practice of overbreeding. Of the fifteen thousand foals that are bred into racing every year in Australia, less than 5,000 will ever start a race. This means that there are a lot more horses bred for racing than the industry knows what to do with. In the pursuit of finding the rare ‘champion’, thousands of horses will be born into an industry only to be discarded or slaughtered if they don’t win enough races to turn a profit for their owners [12].

Mares are sexually exploited in the racing industry

While under natural conditions, mares normally birth a foal once every two years, brood mares (mares kept for breeding) will be pregnant for more than 90 per cent of their life.

In time for racing seasons, brood mares are forced to reproduce often only weeks after giving birth. This unnatural cycle is made possible through adjusting temperatures and lighting in the mare’s environment and injecting them with drugs such as ‘prostaglandins’ [1].

Not to mention, a mare will have her foal forcibly removed from her over and over again, which is incredibly distressing for the mare and foal alike.

When off the track, racehorses face confinement and isolation

Horses are social, plain-ranging animals, yet racing horses will spend up to 22 hours of the day confined to a stall no bigger than a standard-sized bedroom [13]. This means horses are unable to socialise, with their only reprieve being in the hours they spend training, which is not without its share of cruelty.

In this artificial environment, many horses will develop symptoms of neurotic behaviour, including ‘wind sucking’, where they will grasp an object by their teeth and suck in air, and ‘weaving’, where they sway their head, neck and forequarters from side to side [14]. The treatment of racehorses on and off the field demonstrates the racing industry's lack of concern for the welfare of horses.

Horses don’t enjoy being raced and whipped for sport

It’s a common misconception that horses being ridden by humans is natural and thereby, horses actually enjoy being raced. While we might try to comfort ourselves with this idea and feel wonder at the coexistence of horses and humans, this is simply a fallacy. Racing involves striking the horse with a whip to enhance their performance, and horses must be “broken'“ before racing is possible.

While Racing Australia has rules about the number of strikes a horse may receive during a race, in the last 100 metres of a race, there is no limit on the number of times a horse can be struck [12].

On the race track, horses are forced to push themselves past their physical limitations, resulting frequently in catastrophic injuries and sudden death. This obvious risk of harm posed to race horses cannot coexist with the notion that racing is both natural and safe.

Racehorses are often forced to take performance-enhancing drugs

The use of drugs in horse racing is common, as with so much at stake for trainers for their horses to win races and turn a profit, they will do whatever they can to give their horses an advantage, often against the welfare of the horses. Stimulants may be used to give horses extra energy for temporary periods, as well as pain-relieving drugs to ease the pain that horses may experience as a result of disease or injury. Other drugs can be used to control bleeding affecting the heart and lungs resulting from over-exertion in racing [15]. The use of drugs in horse racing is insidious and almost always used to benefit trainers and owners, rather than the horses themselves.