It’s Melbourne Cup day, the day that stops a nation. A public holiday here in Victoria.
The horses are prancing in the mounting yard, the trainers, the owners, the fashionistas and the full panoply of those who find some reason to support these events are sorting through their wardrobes ready to prance in the carparks, the birdcage, the champagne lounges.
It’s a big day. The roses will be blooming, the press will be there ready to cover everything from fashion successes and failures, to the potential horror of a jockey falling and being carted off to hospital or a horse falling and being put down at the scene. It’s day full of too many possibilities to mention.
But let’s prance through some other interesting facts of the horse racing industry shall we?
Firstly, do you remember Black Caviar? That magical mare who captured us all with her extraordinary record of 25 starts and 25 wins, all achieved in what pundits describe as ‘the very best of company’. But, she never made it to the age of 25, unlike many retired successful racers who can live well into their 20s. [Source: Wikipedia Black_Caviar]
She died this August just one day short of her 18th birthday. She died giving birth to her 11th foal in nine years, and sadly the foal also died soon after. When you realise that the average gestation period for a horse is 340 days, it’s hard not to ponder the possibility that she was ‘bred to death’. [Source: The Conversation]
Just like the greyhound racing industry, the horse racing industry (it is an industry, definitely NOT a sport) for every ‘success’ there are hundreds if not thousand of ‘failures’. For greyhounds sometimes it was literally a killing field or for the luckier animal, shelters for re-homing. For unsuccessful racing horses, ‘wastage’ is the term used in the industry, it includes the ignominious and cruel shipping by the truckload to slaughterhouses for pet food. [Source Animals Australia]
The latter I have seen first hand. Something I wish I had never seen and troubles me deeply to this day. I stopped at a roadhouse in Sea Lake on my way back to Mildura from Melbourne. It was a place I had used frequently on my travels. After re-fueling and using the toilet, I noticed a B-double parked on the opposite side of the road, obviously Melbourne-bound. It was a 46 degree day, and the vehicle was parked in the full sun. I was used to seeing stock trucks carrying sheep or cattle, but the sounds coming from this vehicle were not of those creatures. I stood, listening for a few minutes. And then, I realised they were horses. Packed into this enormous vehicle, parked in the unrelenting sun of a Mallee summer.
It’s a sound and memory that haunts me still. I wish I could unsee it and unhear it, but that is not possible. It’s a weak protest I know, but I no longer stop at that sorry place.
So while you are there at the Melbourne Cup today (a special hello to the vegetarians), supporting the horse-racing industry and everything that goes with it, because that is what you are doing: remember Black Caviar, for whom even extraordinary success did not guarantee a happy retirement; and all the poor creatures who were tried out but ended up on a painful journey to become petfood.
Enjoy the day, I wish you luck!
Sources:
https://animalsaustralia.org/our-work/horse-racing/background/