Posted on the 3rd March 2016
An exhausted horse, brought to the ground by the demands of running in the big race, continues to be whipped by his dementedly ambitious jockey. The rider cries ‘Come on! They’re getting away!’ It is a scene from the Cheltenham Festival as rendered by Animal Aid in a bitingly satirical postcard image that the group’s supporters will be circulating ahead of the March 15-18 event.
Says Animal Aid Director, Andrew Tyler:
‘There are members of the Cheltenham Festival elite who fancy themselves as refined and sophisticated, but one of our cartoons gets closer to the truth in depicting a pair of champagne-quaffing nitwits who are too wrapped up in themselves to register that horses are dying before their very eyes.
‘The other image, of the deranged jockey, shows a man who perfectly sums up the win-at-all-costs flavour of the big prize money event.’
The two images can be downloaded without charge from a special Animal Aid Cheltenham microsite. The national campaign group will also be distributing thousands of hard copies of the postcards, which were specially commissioned from artist Mark Stafford.
Animal Aid’s Cheltenham microsite also features eight reasons to boycott the Festival. Number one is the Gloucestershire course’s unrivalled record of equine fatalities. Since Animal Aid launched its online database, Race Horse Deathwatch, in March 2007 – in response to 11 equine deaths at the preceding Festival – a further 22 horses have been killed there. Forty more have perished in other events at the course since 2007.
Rather than the racing authorities pitching into action that is equal to the scale of the problem, Animal Aid has detected a large element of complacency. Our Horse Racing Consultant, Dene Stansall, produced a detailed analysis in 2015 of the troubled Gloucestershire course. Called, straightforwardly, Why more horses die at Cheltenham than at any other British racecourse, it was sent to the British Horseracing Authority, the National Trainers Federation, the Professional Jockeys Association, the Racehorse Owners Association, the Jockey Club and Cheltenham Racecourse. Not one of them bothered even responding.
Please contact Andrew Tyler or Dene Stansall on 01732 364 546.
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