Royal Ascot – another horse dies

Posted on the 22nd June 2015

Horse racing’s showcase meeting, Royal Ascot, has claimed the life of three-year-old colt, Stravagante, who is reported to have broken his leg in a race on Friday (19 June) and was subsequently destroyed. This follows a life-threatening injury to the Queen’s horse Capel Path, who fractured a leg on the previous day at the Berkshire course.

That same day (Thursday 18 June) Animal Aid staged a visually stunning ‘Spectre of Death’ ceremony outside Ascot’s main gates to alert both race-goers and the media to the racecourse’s alarming mortality rate: it ranks as Britain’s most dangerous Flat (turf) venue. In fact, Ascot can be said to have become something of a graveyard for horses, with deaths occurring at the June meeting in each of the past four years. In 2014 alone, four horses perished. Whatever the reasons for this shocking death toll they cannot be passed off as accidents.

Says, Animal Aid’s Horse Racing Consultant, Dene Stansall:

‘After 2014’s shameful Royal race meeting it would have been expected that Ascot would do all it possibly could to avoid further deaths. Yet, this appears not to be the case. Not only have we witnessed a fatal injury to a horse in the presence of the Queen but, shockingly, abuse with the whip by jockeys with what a leading racing journalist recently described as ‘a win at all costs’ approach. It is time the welfare of race horses was independently reviewed and concerted action taken to stop horses suffering.’

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