Behind the romanticized facade of horse racing lies an often deadly world of injuries, drug use, gruesome breakdowns and slaughter. While spectators adorn themselves in fancy outfits and sip mint juleps, horses run for their lives. While wealthy owners, trainers and gamblers of this sport may offer donations to help rehabilitate injured horses back into competition, their participation still contributes to exploitation of young running horses destined to replace them on America’s racetracks in due course.
Horseracing must address its problems head on in order to be truly ethical, by taking unorthodox, costly, and complex steps. These should include an ideological reckoning at both macro business and industry levels which prioritizes horse health from breeding through aftercare; furthermore, an entirely new approach would also need to be taken towards racing, such as capping the number of races a horse can run and its years in service while simultaneously creating more natural, horse-friendly lifestyles for racehorses.
The first group, composed of those who use dangerous drugs or otherwise abuse their horses, are an unscrupulous minority who stain the integrity of sport for everyone else. A second category exists within this generalized industry as “dupes,” who believe its fair and honest practices prevail despite evidence to the contrary. And last but not least are honorable horsemen and women who recognize that things may be more lopsided than they ought to be but fail to do everything possible to bring about change.
Betting on horse racing involves placing bets on whether a particular horse will win, place or show. How much one wins depends upon how many horses have been bet upon, the odds for each individual horse and what type of bet was placed (straight bets, parlays and accumulator bets are among many options available to participants).
In the event that two or more horses cross the finish line at roughly the same time and it is impossible to pick out one from among them by visual inspection alone, a photo-finish is declared. Stewards will examine a photograph taken at that momentous moment to make their determination; otherwise it is considered a dead heat and all bets are returned back into your account.
Silks are jackets and caps worn by owners of horses in races. White silks typically mark those owning winning horses while blue ones identify those of runners-up horses. Silks may also be used to indicate post position (e.g. yellow silk indicates post one) or designate a particular trainer or race type on certain tracks.