All right, I know many horse racing people are nice types, attracted to the business by the opportunity to work with horses. And if there were no racing the horse population of the world would be considerably smaller.
Still sometimes the attitude of people around racing to the animals on which the whole game depends is disgusting. I am resigned to the fact that any horse too injured to return to the track is promptly shot. Owners are greedy heartless creatures whose participation in the sport rarely has anything to do with liking horses, and they do not want to pay for the upkeep of invalids.
Still, callousness about animal suffering reached new heights on the back page of yesterday’s Post, where under the by-line of Alan Aitken a five-horse pile-up on the track was reported. The report was, quite properly, mainly focussed on the jockeys who fell off as a result of the crash. One of them broke two limbs. But we did not stop at him. we were treated to a total of 14 paragraphs explaining exactly what happened to whom, with what consequences, what the other jockeys remembered of the incident and who would be riding again, when.
Only thing I was left wondering was: what became of the horses? You had to turn to the Standard for the low-down on the real victims here – after all the jockeys are volunteers. Three of the horses had bruises. Two of the horses had more serious injuries and were shot. Nice game, isn’t it?
tim's experiment 
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