Horse races have developed from primitive contests of speed or stamina between two horses to an enormous public-entertainment business that involves multiple owners, thousands of horses and sophisticated monitoring technology. Yet the underlying concept has remained unchanged: the horse that finishes first wins. The sport’s inherent physical stresses cause numerous ills in the animals, from catastrophic cardiac episodes to broken limbs.
The deaths of Eight Belles and the star-crossed Medina Spirit, both in 2008, sparked a reckoning of the sport’s ethics and integrity. But it’s not just a matter of horses dying in races; they are also routinely killed by trainers, who use the performance-enhancing drug furosemide, better known as Lasix, on their mounts. While animal welfare advocates want the drug banned, some in the industry argue that better self-regulation is the answer.
When a horse loses its balance and falls on its back legs, it suffers a painful injury called laminitis. The condition, which causes the horse’s hoof to become inflamed and disintegrate, can lead to permanent disability or death. Horses that can’t distribute weight evenly on all four legs are often euthanized, and even those that survive may be unable to walk or carry their own bodyweight. Jockeys, who stand on the horses’ backs and control their direction of travel, are also vulnerable to injuries. They are particularly likely to get hurt in a fall that causes the horse to break its leg or slip its tongue.
In addition to the traumatic injuries that horses sustain, they are exposed to infectious diseases like strangles, influenza and botulism. In recent years, researchers have discovered that a significant proportion of racehorses that die of acute or chronic illnesses have tested positive for these bacteria.
Another serious problem in racing is unsanctioned racing, in which horses compete without regulation. This activity can lead to shoddy veterinary care and dangerous track conditions, which increases the risk of injury and death for both the horses and jockeys. It can also expose horses to unregulated medications, including the performance-enhancing drugs Lasix and clenbuterol.
When journalists cover elections by framing them as a horse race and giving the most attention to frontrunners and underdogs – a strategy known as horse race reporting – voters, candidates and the news media themselves suffer, a growing body of research suggests. This collection of research looks at the impact of the practice, as well as the problems associated with probabilistic forecasting, which aggregates polling data to estimate a candidate’s likelihood of winning or losing.