More Zonkyness

Yesterday the Grand National was run which for those who don’t know is a steeplechase (horses jumping) that is a bit of a national institution as nearly half the adult population of the UK bets on it. It is even one of the sporting events required to be shown on free to air television (at least in the UK).

But how many people are aware that 2 horses were killed running the race ? And how many are aware that three of the horses that finished required emergency treatment for dehydration at the end of the race … including the race winner ?

Probably relatively few. The television coverage apparently did not show the deaths, and the cameras were allegedly trained to avoid the scene of dead horses being pulled off the course during the second circuit of the course. Why wasn’t this shown ? It is part of the reality of the Grand National, and lying about this presents a false picture of what the race is.

Lying may seem a bit of an exaggeration, but how often are accidents in a sporting event hidden from us ? Car crashes in racing are shown, injuries in sports such as rugby are shown, etc. Yet those show video horse racing want to hide the accidents from us. Perhaps they are worried that showing horses being killed will discourage those throwing money at the sport.

Looking closely at the coverage, it was noticeable that :-

1. During the race itself, no mention was made of the deaths or even the course change that happened to avoid the two fences where the two horses died. Whilst horse commentators don’t have an awful lot of time to add in extra detail, you do wonder why the course change wasn’t mentioned.
2. During the race, a ticket tape at the bottom of the screen showed the ‘fallers’, but no mention was made of the deaths.
3. After the race, they went through the position that all the finishers were placed and went into detail of all the non-finishers. No mention was made of deaths at this stage.
4. In the long post-race analysis and interviews (during which time of course, many people will have turned off), there was one small mention of the horse deaths. They spent more time panning over shots of pretty ladies than they did mentioning the competitors who died.

It turns out the television coverage did briefly show the tented off area enclosing the two dead horses.

It is easy to get carried away with the deaths of race horses during a race and suggest banning races, but I’m not one of them. Even someone as ignorant of horses as I am, can easily see that horses like racing – many of the horses who fell, picked themselves back up and carried on without their jockey. And indeed it is possible to see that some horses say to themselves “bugger this for a game of soldiers, I’m quitting” and refuse to go on – that’s what “pulled up” in the statistics means (5 ‘pulled up’ and 3 unseated their rider in the 2011 race).

Unfortunately a lack of easily accessible statistics on fatalities at the Grand National over time means it is difficult to say whether the race has become safer over the years. Although it is notable that there were just 2 fatalities in the first 10 years of the Grand National (with admittedly far fewer runners) leading one to suspect that measures to increase safety have perhaps not been as effective as was hoped.