Thoroughbred Racing Commentary contributor Daniel Ross wrote this week of the evolution of public attitudes and how they can and will affect the future of the sport of horse racing. He considers the public embarrassments racing has endured in just the past few years, from the spate of deaths at Santa Anita to the photograph of trainer Gordon Elliott astride a dead horse, and asks why those instances have garnered such intense media attention, while others, perhaps equally as egregious, have fallen by the wayside.
Ross writes: “Why, for example, has disciplinary action been metered out by the sport's regulators to Elliott but not to Sheikh Mohammed, whose wife fled to London allegedly fearing for her life, and who has been accused of kidnapping and imprisoning his daughter? Is one action more morally repugnant than the other?”
And: “If, for example, the broader media is genuinely incensed by mistreatment of horses for sport, where are all the column inches devoted to the ongoing problem of match racing in the U.S., an unregulated and illegal activity notorious for prodigious drug use?”
He posits that both the prevalence of social media and the presence of well-funded animal rights campaigns may be behind the impetus for horse racing to change how it views the importance of public perspective.
Ross concludes: the sport of horse racing “still gets to write its own story. Which one, however, will it choose?”
Read more at the Thoroughbred Racing Commentary.
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