It was a freak show. I wish I could be more polite in my opening line. After all, risking reader alienation, especially in the first sentence, is a cardinal sin for writers. But the situation is dire, the pain and suffering worsening, and the killing intensifying. Allowing those culpable to act out their murderous delusions – without interruption or impingement and absent of proper accountability – can no longer be permitted. The web of Britain’s racecourses, shadowy institutions built on animal servitude and subjugation, and primed for human-on-animal brutality, are spaces where our collective morality is being challenged. And with their trickery and falsehoods, the racecourses are winning and morality losing.
‘It is your privilege that death is still tragedy to you.’
Jumping to Death
The Cheltenham Festival is a four-day event that takes place every March, with prize money second only to the Grand National. The meet dates back to 1860, and today comprises of twenty-eight jump races.
Jump races are particularly hazardous because horses are simply not designed for jumping over obstacles at speed. It’s an unnatural act that causes them considerable stress, anxiety, and harm, much of which is due to their physiology. Unlike humans, horses have laterally-placed eyes, degrading their forward vision and impairing their ability to judge the distance and position of an obstacle when approaching it at speed. Forming judgement is made even harder when many horses are jumping the same jump simultaneously. Long limbs, which are extended when galloping, further compromise a horse’s movement through the jump as they are unable to accurately adjust their stride when approaching the obstacle. Added to these limitations, an inflexible spine makes it physically difficult to compensate for jumping errors once the horse realises its miscalculation.
Contrary to popular myth, horses are not built to jump obstacles at speed, or over long distances. Horses only jump obstacles at full gallop because they are forced to do so, frequently by being whipped.
Thursday, March 13th
It was late morning when Springwell Bay entered the dark blue horse box through a side door. It wasn’t particularly roomy – space for two horses and not much else. Nor was it glamorous with its white functional plastic panelling. The drive was short, approximately twenty-five minutes through the market town of Winchcombe. The horse box turned off the A435 and slipped into Cheltenham Racecourse. Springwell Bay arrived unnoticed by most, no fuss or fanfare. There was some waiting around, but just before 2pm he was led to the start line, along with eighteen other horses. They had been gathered to perform, to race over two-and-a-half miles and seventeen jumps. The race was dangerous, but that didn’t concern the organisers. After all, seventy-six horses had died at the Cheltenham Festival since 2000 – the youngest aged four, the eldest eleven.
By 3pm Springwell Bay had been killed. The eight-year-old fell badly after taking a jump. He was attended to by so-called racecourse veterinarians who ended his life. The festival’s death toll was now seventy-seven.
Springwell Bay 2017 – 2025
Friday, March 14th
Emmet Mullins is a former jockey turned trainer, based in County Carlow, Ireland. Mullins won races, eighty-three jump races to be exact, and one suspects he has been de-sensitised to the dangers they present to horses. Watch him being interviewed and he remains emotionless, referring to the horses under his charge in mechanical terms. One horse trained by Mullins and in servitude to owner JP McManus, was Corbetts Cross. The eight-year-old was no stranger to Cheltenham, having raced and won there in 2024.
In early February, Corbetts Cross collided with another horse during a meet at Fairyhouse Racecourse in Ireland. Mullins claimed: “He (Corbetts Cross) seems none the worse physically after the incident, but we’ll bide our time with him and give him a chance to recover from an experience like that.”
Corbetts Cross was subsequently entered to run in Cheltenham’s Gold Cup, the fifth race on the festival’s last day, which is three miles long and includes twenty-two jumps. He fell after trying to clear the last fence, and unable to get up he was taken away in a horse ambulance. Shortly afterwards he was dead.
By that Friday evening, the Cheltenham Festival was responsible for the death of seventy-eight horses since 2000.
Corbetts Cross 2017 – 2025
Springwell Bay and Corbetts Cross died in front of thousands of race goers, who crammed the terraces and crowded the finish line. Attendees, in their finest attire, sipped drinks, and laughed through polished white smiles. This was abuse as spectacle, and death was incidental. This place, despite its faux veneer and orchestrated deception, is in reality a depraved house of hell where humans lose their minds and horses lose their lives.
Shortly after Corbetts Cross’ death, Iain Green, from Animal Aid concluded: “This is not a festival, this is a horror film; these are not athletes, these are innocent animals who have no choice but to run for their lives on a racecourse designed to punish them.”
Every Two Days a Racehorse Dies
Breeze Time (far left) was the first racehorse to be killed at a British racetrack in 2025. She pulled up in her first ever race on January 11th. She would have been three on January 28th.
“So, you’ve been collecting data since 2007, and you’re suggesting 2,970 racehorses have died on racecourses since then. That basically equates to one horse dying every two days during that period.”
“It does. And that is probably an underestimate.”
“What happened in 2024?”
“214 horses were killed – 162 horses killed in jump racing, 52 in flat racing; that’s about seventy-five percent in jump racing to twenty-five percent in flat racing. And overall, the 214 deaths represent a twenty-one percent increase against the previous year.”
Dene Stansall is an animal welfare consultant and activist, and has tracked, monitored and recorded horse racing abuses over the last twenty-five years. The man is well versed on the inner workings of the racing industry and is the custodian of the only public data base of racing horse deaths in Britain. The data set that Dene has diligently constructed covers 2007 to the present day, and what it tells us is alarming. Racehorses are dying at an increasing rate, and their deaths are avoidable.
Dene went onto highlight an additional 600 horses from the racing industry were sent to slaughter in 2024. Half were under five years old.
And he didn’t stop there: “I want to draw your attention to something else which is important. The British Horse Racing Authority (BHA), quietly, without any publicity, put on their website that 221 horses died in 2024. So, they have seven more horses than I’ve been able to find.”
I ask Dene the reason for the discrepancy. What he shared was shocking.
“What they’ve included is horses who have been killed by elective euthanasia at a racecourse, where an owner has decided to have the horse destroyed, not because the horse is injured, but because they [the owner] no longer wants the horse.”
“Healthy horses with no injury can be killed at the discretion of an owner?” I ask.
“Yes” confirms Dene.
Elective euthanasia
After speaking with Dene, I visit the BHA web site. Clicking through various drop-down menus and scrolling through several pages, I find the data Dene referred to. It highlights 221 deaths for 2024 (versus Dene’s 214). In the footnotes the BHA confirms from 2024 onwards their data set was extended to include fatalities whether ‘as a direct result of an injury or any other reason (referred to as elective euthanasia).’
Tucked away in the text is a link to the Horse Welfare Board’s euthanasia guidelines. A somewhat grisly document that demeans life. According to the Board, a horse may be killed if there is ‘a change in the circumstances of owners or keepers, including financial and emotional considerations … which may impact negatively on a horse’s welfare.’
I re-read the sentence and realise racecourses are killing perfectly healthy horses simply because their owners have lost interest in them. While the practice of elective euthanasia remains opaque, and data collection is not readily available nor standardised, we know at least seven racehorses were unnecessarily killed last year. I can’t tell you any more about them because although their deaths were recorded, their names were not. While the absolute number might be considered small, it further speaks to the deadly nature of horseracing and the macabre functions of racecourses.
Hungerford 2012
Travel to Hungerford in Berkshire, the High Street to be exact, and you’ll find the National Trainers Federation (NTF). It’s next to the library and opposite the Spice Valley Indian restaurant. It’s a two-storey red brick building, with white vertical blinds hanging in the windows. It is uninspiring. Inside, the staff of this industry body promise to ‘represent and protect trainers’ interests.’ They do this – in part – by issuing advice and guidelines.
One of their documents dating back to 2012 is titled Racecourse Guidance for Elective Euthanasia. It casually acknowledges the increase in trainers and owners requesting the killing of horses that do not warrant ‘destruction under the British Equine Veterinary Association guidelines.’
Rather than challenging the unnecessary deaths, the NTF inexplicably recommended a three-step protocol to facilitate such requests: The owner or trainer needed to sign a sparse form, agree to ‘both the cost of euthanasia and carcass disposal’ and to be informed the killing could ‘negate future insurance claims.’ Perversely, there was no requirement to justify the killing, and that omission continues today, thirteen years later.
Could it be that elective euthanasia is much more common than the BHA would have us believe?
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This is the latest in a series of articles about animal rights, justice, and liberation. Both animal and human rights are principled on the idea that all sentient beings have inherent value, and should be able to live natural lives free from oppression, servitude, and fear. The constructs of abuse and exploitation used on humans are rooted in those we see used on animals. Animal justice is the moral baseline because of the sheer scale of abuse (it is estimated humans slaughter between eighty and ninety billion land animals each year) and because animals are unable to organise politically, leaving them marginalised and without agency. They are our most vulnerable.
©2025 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
