Posted on the 3rd March 2025
A week tomorrow heralds the beginning of the four-day Cheltenham Festival, an event which has taken the lives of 76 horses since 2000. It is hard to imagine any human-sport with such a disturbing – and growing – death toll.
Two horses, Highland Hunter and Ose Partir, died at last year’s festival. Highland Hunter died of a heart attack whilst Ose Partir was killed after becoming fatally injured. The coverage, as usual, glossed over these deaths and the industry continued their empty rhetoric about their new marketing campaign ‘Horse PWR’ (read more here).
Furthermore, over 3000 horses have been killed as a result of jump racing since 2000 – on average, that is 1 in 58 horses each season. Cheltenham Racecourse is one of the most dangerous in the world – the challenging obstacles and ‘win-at-all-costs’ mindset of jockeys creating a lethal cocktail for these innocent animals.
Moreover, life away from the racecourse is also exploitative and rife with abuse. An unknown number of horses are killed in training or because they failed to make the grade. Once horses are no longer ‘profitable’ they face uncertain futures – often entering a downward spiral of neglect, or enduring the horrors of the slaughterhouse and death at the hands of a ‘knackerman’.
This is not a ‘festival’ but a hedonistic nightmare which sees horses running for their lives on a course designed to push them beyond their limits. Despite horses dying every single year on this course, this hellish spectacle continues. Furthermore, the claim by The British Horseracing Authority, the sport’s governing body, that ‘Nothing matters to us more than the health and wellbeing of our horses’ – is farcical. Again and again, innocent horses’ lives are deemed as less significant than profit.
Our new report ‘Victims of Abuse in British Horse Racing’ will be published on Thursday 6th March – check back to our website then for a deep-dive into the reality of horse racing in Britain.
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