A horse race is a form of competition between two or more horses that are harnessed together. The races take place on a racetrack, where the horses run and jump over obstacles while spectators watch. The races have a history dating back thousands of years and are an important part of the sport of equestrian riding. They are also a popular source of entertainment for the public and have been featured in movies such as Seabiscuit.
Horse racing is a sport that involves betting on which horse will win an upcoming race and is widely considered to be one of the most exciting sports in existence. However, despite its popularity, many people have concerns about the safety of horse racing and its effect on animal welfare.
One of the main concerns is that horse racing causes injuries and even death to horses. Many of these injuries are caused by the pressure put on the animal to perform, and they can lead to a variety of health problems including laminitis, colic and fractures. The other concern is that the physical and psychological stress of horse racing can lead to mental illness in the horses.
There is also a major ethical issue with the way that races are conducted. The use of whips, pain medications and sedatives is controversial, and it has been shown to cause serious injury to the horses involved in the sport. Lastly, the fact that horse races are often held on private property owned by wealthy individuals means that the animals are not being treated fairly.
These concerns have led to increased scrutiny of horse racing and the use of animals in it. As a result, some people are calling for races to be banned altogether. Others have proposed reforms such as banning the use of pre-election polls and requiring that the races be conducted on publicly-owned land.
Another problem is that when journalists focus on who is winning or losing instead of on policy issues — what some have called horse race coverage — voters, candidates and the news industry itself suffers, as a growing body of research suggests.
Using semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation, this article investigates how key industry and animal advocacy informants conceptualise naturalness in relation to common racing practices that potentially impact on thoroughbreds’ welfare. Respondents were presented with four common images of thoroughbreds on race day and asked to comment on them. Both industry and advocacy informants tended to naturalise and normalise the horses’ expressions in these images, as well as downplay the potential harm from specific racing practices depicted.
In terms of the horses’ most natural activities, the majority of the industry informants surveyed considered that grazing and being with other horses were more natural than racing. In contrast, the animal advocacy informants tended to see the image of the horse with its tongue tied as unnatural and stressful. They also emphasised the lack of visibility of the breadth of welfare issues in race imagery.