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The racing industry often claims that the wellbeing of the racehorses is its top priority. But as these two quotes from industry-insiders show, this is far from the truth.

For those horrified by the deaths of seven horses at the 2016 Cheltenham Festival, please make a pledge to help with Animal Aid's Horse Racing Awareness Week.

With the racing establishment desperately trying to dampen any news and debate about multiple deaths at this year’s Cheltenham Festival, another two horses have perished on the final day of the Gloucestershire meeting.

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!’

Eleven horses were killed on British racecourses in as many days during February – a death toll that serves as a depressing curtain-raiser for the Cheltenham Festival (March 15-18), which itself is a graveyard for horses*.

National campaign group Animal Aid is demanding a complete shutdown of Catterick Bridge racecourse after a spate of deaths this January in which four horses have been killed in just three days of racing.

On Sunday 20 December, the now retired jockey Tony (AP) McCoy will receive a BBC ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ for his contribution to sport.

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.

The 2015 Aintree Grand National meeting has claimed its second victim. Balder Succes was destroyed on Sunday morning, two days after a serious fall in Friday’s Melling Chase.

A supporter of national campaign group, Animal Aid, has just scaled the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square to wrap the famous ‘Gift Horse’, by Hans Hacke, in a green banner that reads: Horse Racing: You bet, they die