No and yes respectively.
You seem to assume horse racing is some ungoverned animal beatdown with with no regulations.
Right
I was sure that there was a breaking in treatment which involved causing a great deal of pain to the horses highly sensitive nose. I can't find it on the web though so perhaps I was mistaken, although I'm sure I remember it from somewhere.
Still
What I did find is that many consider the training of horses to be cruel. Horses do not want people sat on their backs, they don't like it. Training often involves punishments to make the horse feel very tired or uncomfortable to make them more obedient in the future. They are not entirely happy to give people a ride, they are made to. I actually got that from horsey forums, it's all more or less the same. Their spirit is broken so that they no longer resist to something they don't enjoy.
Now the race course.
Putting aside the fact that they don't want somebody on their back in the first place, why would any animal want to knowingly put their life at risk without good reason (except for us). They simply just don't, they are being made to do something that they simply do not want to be doing and that thing is putting their lives at risk.
Now you seem to think that I have a thing against it, I'm not that fussed. I eat meat, wear leather shoes, and I'm aware of what a hypocrite is. The only reason I popped into this thread was in the hope of reading daft drinking stories.
But to but it into context, again, I was just responding to somebody's daft comment that the horses love it which is clearly absolute bollocks. Why would any animal 'love' doing something that they have been made to do unwillingly from a young age AND puts their life at risk?
It's just a shallow and weak excuse in an attempt to justify the deaths that occur?
