Horse Matters: Rags to Riches, Ruffian, Phar Lap, and Hidalgo
Suki Falconberg Ph.D.
June 15, 2007
On Saturday, June 9, 2007, Rags to Riches, a filly, won the Belmont Stakes. It was the first time since 1905 that such a gender upset has occurred; and, in the history of the event, only 9 fillies have run.
Sportscaster Jeannine Edwards likened the feat to Maria Sharapova defeating Roger Federer or Annika Sorenstam taking on the men in golf. The sportscasters said that she was a big tough filly, with “moxy,” not afraid to rough it up with the boys. Rags to Riches, said the announcer, has attitude and she is used to training with the colts. They made a point that, as a filly, she carried five pounds less into the race than the guys--but did not seem to think that that was too much an advantage for a ‘girl’ to have against a field of males.
Also bandied about were parallels with women’s lib. This was, everyone at ESPN/ABC kept saying, a day for ‘girl power.’
Despite all the drama and hype of this event, and the appeal of so rare a gender upset in the sportsworld, I am not in favor of using horses for sport. If you have to put a piece of iron in her mouth to control her, and thrash her with a whip to make her go, there is nothing much ‘liberating’ about the experience of racing for the horse.
We have built an industry around an illusion: we pretend that the horses like to exhaust themselves in these quick, unnatural spurts, calling it a tribute to their ‘competitive spirit,’ when it is really a construct of our own egos. We race these young two- and three-year olds whose bones have not even developed fully, and then go through false mourning rituals when they break a leg and have to be put down.
The evening of the Belmont, ABC aired the movie Ruffian —the story of yet another remarkable filly who could beat the boys. She breaks a leg and has to be destroyed. There is much sorrow and wrenching of hearts, as if the filly mattered in her own right, not just as a racing machine.
The Australian horse Phar Lap was pushed to such unnatural limits that he died of exhaustion. He is an animal hero in that country, as if there were glory in his being raced to death.
Does the horse have a choice? Any sane horse would choose to peacefully munch grass rather than dealing with a painful piece of iron in her mouth, and a rider on her back whipping and goading her to run around a circle of track toward no goal.
Hidalgo, the American mustang forced to endure a ‘Race of Fire’ across the deserts of Syria and Iraq, was the victim of human ego (and insanity) taken to extremes. (Similar to that other insanity, the Iditarod, a yearly dog race that injures and kills these animals forced to run under torturous and dangerous conditions. The media cover up the number of deaths and injuries so as to maintain the idea that this is some glorious and magnificent contest that tests the limits of the spirit, etc., etc.)
Hidalgo, the movie about that desert race, starred Viggo Mortensen, a man who styles himself as a social activist. It was disappointing to see him making such a shallow and thoughtless film about the torture of animals under the guise of fake glory. What was valorous about pushing this poor animal to such an extent that he almost died--to ‘win.’ To win what? The horse doesn’t care if he ‘wins.’ It’s human stupidity that elevates the winning of a useless race over the life of an animal.
The brutality of racing does not stop on the track. Visit the slaughterhouses where the ‘discards’ of the racing industry go—those who are not fast enough, those who have no worth since they have not fulfilled their role as ‘racing machines.’ There are plants in Illinois and Texas and when the kill line goes so fast that the stun guns can’t do their job, the horses are sometimes dismembered while still alive. Their eyes roll back in their heads with terror and pain.
Because of Barbaro’s death, the Preakness coverage did make some small mention of the slaughterhouses, but it was quite underplayed—for the obvious reason that no one in power in racing wants to disturb the surface of such a lucrative industry in order to discover the ugly secrets underneath.
Live transport’ is another ugly secret. Before the horror of the slaughterhouses, the ex-racing horses are packed into trucks with other rejects: old, worn-out carriage horses who can no longer weather the exhaust of cars and the concrete streets of big cities; horses purchased cheap from BLM (Bureau of Land Management) auctions by men called ‘kill buyers’ and then sold for a profit to the slaughter plants; ponies and ‘pet’ horses no longer wanted. Many of these horses are ill and weak and on the trips to the slaughterhouses, which can take days, they are not fed and are given little or no water. The bigger ones trample the smaller and the weaker ones, and some die en route (the lucky ones, you could say).
Part of what I know about racing comes from reading Dick Francis. In all of his books, he paints a picture of the primeval bond between man and horse—jockeys on the Downs, in England, riding in the early morning mist, our experiencing of the elemental and beautiful strength of these fabled beings called horses.
What are they worth, to the racing industry, as living beings with a value of their own? After that elemental scene on the Downs, in the mist, Francis will write a scene in which a jockey calls his useless, slow mount ‘dogmeat.’ It is a huge contradiction. How can horses be beautiful and fabled and magnificent—and then be ‘dogmeat’?
That legendary bond between man and horse is a relationship of dominance. There is nothing glorious about it.
Once I saw a BLM round-up of wild horses in Nevada. The terrified animals were driven into corrals where they bumped and jostled frantically against each other. One filly ran full force into the corral fence, practically knocking herself out. In her wild land, she had never known what a fence was. The only solace I could find was that maybe she did not know, in this one moment, that her freedom had been taken from her forever.
Suki Falconberg, © 2007
Sportscaster Jeannine Edwards likened the feat to Maria Sharapova defeating Roger Federer or Annika Sorenstam taking on the men in golf. The sportscasters said that she was a big tough filly, with “moxy,” not afraid to rough it up with the boys. Rags to Riches, said the announcer, has attitude and she is used to training with the colts. They made a point that, as a filly, she carried five pounds less into the race than the guys--but did not seem to think that that was too much an advantage for a ‘girl’ to have against a field of males.
Also bandied about were parallels with women’s lib. This was, everyone at ESPN/ABC kept saying, a day for ‘girl power.’
Despite all the drama and hype of this event, and the appeal of so rare a gender upset in the sportsworld, I am not in favor of using horses for sport. If you have to put a piece of iron in her mouth to control her, and thrash her with a whip to make her go, there is nothing much ‘liberating’ about the experience of racing for the horse.
We have built an industry around an illusion: we pretend that the horses like to exhaust themselves in these quick, unnatural spurts, calling it a tribute to their ‘competitive spirit,’ when it is really a construct of our own egos. We race these young two- and three-year olds whose bones have not even developed fully, and then go through false mourning rituals when they break a leg and have to be put down.
The evening of the Belmont, ABC aired the movie Ruffian —the story of yet another remarkable filly who could beat the boys. She breaks a leg and has to be destroyed. There is much sorrow and wrenching of hearts, as if the filly mattered in her own right, not just as a racing machine.
The Australian horse Phar Lap was pushed to such unnatural limits that he died of exhaustion. He is an animal hero in that country, as if there were glory in his being raced to death.
Does the horse have a choice? Any sane horse would choose to peacefully munch grass rather than dealing with a painful piece of iron in her mouth, and a rider on her back whipping and goading her to run around a circle of track toward no goal.
Hidalgo, the American mustang forced to endure a ‘Race of Fire’ across the deserts of Syria and Iraq, was the victim of human ego (and insanity) taken to extremes. (Similar to that other insanity, the Iditarod, a yearly dog race that injures and kills these animals forced to run under torturous and dangerous conditions. The media cover up the number of deaths and injuries so as to maintain the idea that this is some glorious and magnificent contest that tests the limits of the spirit, etc., etc.)
Hidalgo, the movie about that desert race, starred Viggo Mortensen, a man who styles himself as a social activist. It was disappointing to see him making such a shallow and thoughtless film about the torture of animals under the guise of fake glory. What was valorous about pushing this poor animal to such an extent that he almost died--to ‘win.’ To win what? The horse doesn’t care if he ‘wins.’ It’s human stupidity that elevates the winning of a useless race over the life of an animal.
The brutality of racing does not stop on the track. Visit the slaughterhouses where the ‘discards’ of the racing industry go—those who are not fast enough, those who have no worth since they have not fulfilled their role as ‘racing machines.’ There are plants in Illinois and Texas and when the kill line goes so fast that the stun guns can’t do their job, the horses are sometimes dismembered while still alive. Their eyes roll back in their heads with terror and pain.
Because of Barbaro’s death, the Preakness coverage did make some small mention of the slaughterhouses, but it was quite underplayed—for the obvious reason that no one in power in racing wants to disturb the surface of such a lucrative industry in order to discover the ugly secrets underneath.
Live transport’ is another ugly secret. Before the horror of the slaughterhouses, the ex-racing horses are packed into trucks with other rejects: old, worn-out carriage horses who can no longer weather the exhaust of cars and the concrete streets of big cities; horses purchased cheap from BLM (Bureau of Land Management) auctions by men called ‘kill buyers’ and then sold for a profit to the slaughter plants; ponies and ‘pet’ horses no longer wanted. Many of these horses are ill and weak and on the trips to the slaughterhouses, which can take days, they are not fed and are given little or no water. The bigger ones trample the smaller and the weaker ones, and some die en route (the lucky ones, you could say).
Part of what I know about racing comes from reading Dick Francis. In all of his books, he paints a picture of the primeval bond between man and horse—jockeys on the Downs, in England, riding in the early morning mist, our experiencing of the elemental and beautiful strength of these fabled beings called horses.
What are they worth, to the racing industry, as living beings with a value of their own? After that elemental scene on the Downs, in the mist, Francis will write a scene in which a jockey calls his useless, slow mount ‘dogmeat.’ It is a huge contradiction. How can horses be beautiful and fabled and magnificent—and then be ‘dogmeat’?
That legendary bond between man and horse is a relationship of dominance. There is nothing glorious about it.
Once I saw a BLM round-up of wild horses in Nevada. The terrified animals were driven into corrals where they bumped and jostled frantically against each other. One filly ran full force into the corral fence, practically knocking herself out. In her wild land, she had never known what a fence was. The only solace I could find was that maybe she did not know, in this one moment, that her freedom had been taken from her forever.
Suki Falconberg, © 2007
Print
Email
