Departures 2009

granger said:
Manorson unfortunately put down after winning the 3.55 at Ffos Las
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translate that, please. the way I see it thornton rode an injured horse all the way to the line?! how long is the ban for that? and I do not want to hear jockeys do not realize! :mad:
 
And Marrel, who broke a hind leg in the same race; Tom's Toybox badly lame and taken away in the horse ambulance and the winner Striking Article also returned lame. Two, possibly three, fatalities in a field of nine.

All of which again begs the question, is the Wetherby chase course safe?
 
That is truly awful. I thought it was appalling last year when Market Rasen saw off four in a single meeting, but this really is a shocker. I haven't had a head count of the fatalities to date this year, but I reckon we're into the 300s and counting, and NH has only just begun. We can hardly act surprised when Animal Aid et al has a go at the sport, when a day ends like that.
 
Four fatalities mar Wetherby's comeback

By Graham Green7.37PM 14 OCT 2009
MICKY HAMMOND, who gave a heartfelt interview to the Racing Post this week on the struggles of training with his best horse already sidelined, suffered a sickening double blow on Wednesday as the reopening of Wetherbywas marred by four fatalities.
However, the Yorkshire trainer refused to blame fast ground after his representative, Divex, was one of two horses to die in the meeting's feature race, the Bobby Renton Chase. Two other horses died at the track and others returned home feelingly, leading the RSPCA to on Wednesday night call on the BHA to conduct an inquiry.
Referring to the loss of Divex, Hammond said: "It was nothing to do with the surface. We were just unlucky, the horse jumped the fence well and then his knee went, and it was just one of those things."
At the time of speaking, Hammond was also braced to lose Addison De Witt, a novice hurdle winner for the stable at Perth in July, who was injured in the first race at Uttoxeter.
"Addison De Witt has ruptured his suspensory and he is probably going to be put down tonight at the vets in York," Hammond added.
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Micky Hammond: "just unlucky"
PICTURE: Martin Lynch
Wetherby's clerk of the course, Jonjo Sanderson, despite admitting to feelings of 'nervous anticipation' for Wednesday's first meeting of the winter campaign, had earlier received positive feedback from trainers and jockeys about improvements made to the track over the summer.
Yet he ended the day with very mixed feelings, after four deaths during racing on officially good-to-firm ground.
The Tim Easterby-trained Nut Hand was put down after pulling-up lame after finishing third in the maiden hurdle, while in the featured Bobby Renton Chase, Marrel, a winner of 11 races, suffered a fractured hind pastern in a fall and Divex broke a foreleg after jumping a fence.
In the concluding maiden hurdle, Miss Gibboa, trained by Patrick Haslam, broke a leg when falling at the second-last flight.
"It's very disappointing, it always is when you lose horses," Sanderson said. "I suppose, it's what can happen racing on quickish ground. But it's not what you want to see."
David Muir, the RSPCA's equine consultant, called for a full-scale investigation after describing Wednesday's events as "unacceptable".
Muir said: "I walked the course before racing, and the old part of the course I felt was pretty good, I had no real problems with it, but the new part that has been renovated, coming up the straight, was a little inconsistent, but to be fair, I didn't feel there was something so objectionable that they shouldn't race.
"But sadly the only way you can test a racecourse is by putting horses on it, and looking at all the different factors it may well be that they have to look at the whole issue once again, because the number of horses that have been injuredor died today obviously is unacceptable."
More than £50,000 was spent on summer remedial work at the course in a bid to improve the overall condition of the track and tempt back trainers such as Ferdy Murphy, who had given Wetherby a wide berth for much of this year.
The course had suffered problems since 2007 when sections of it were relaid after a realignment of the course, forced by the widening of the nearby A1.
Read more in Thursday's Racing Post - or click here to buy the newspaper online as a PDF from 9am
 
krizon said:
Oh, shite, not TOM'S TOYBOX? I really like this horse. Hope he's just twanged something and survives.
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RUK reported that the horse had suffered a fractured fetlock. So well done to the vets if they've been able to save him. But his racing days must surely be over.
 
Aldaniti said:
David Muir, the RSPCA's equine consultant, called for a full-scale investigation after describing Wednesday's events as "unacceptable".
Muir said: "I walked the course before racing, and the old part of the course I felt was pretty good, I had no real problems with it, but the new part that has been renovated, coming up the straight, was a little inconsistent, but to be fair, I didn't feel there was something so objectionable that they shouldn't race.
"But sadly the only way you can test a racecourse is by putting horses on it, and looking at all the different factors it may well be that they have to look at the whole issue once again, because the number of horses that have been injuredor died today obviously is unacceptable."
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Well, bugger me, did he want to be any more ambiguous, or even contradictory? So, he walks the course prior to racing and declares it safe to run on - but! - horses are lost so he automatically says it clearly wasn't, with the gift of hindsight, after racing. So, what failsafe system is he willing to suggest to put in place to make sure that no horses will be lost in the future, considering that when he walked it he thought there was nothing wrong with it?

It is sad when horses are lost, but I can't help but feel that nowadays there are too many tree-huggers willing to jump on the bandwagon and decry certain tracks/discliplines; hell, even jockeys/trainers as killing horses. Unfortunate as it is, sometimes coincidences do happen and until anybody is in full receipt of the facts I think it's best to hold fire on the public hangings. Horses can break legs coming down at odd angles, or getting caught up in others, or almost anything.

These bloody people from the RSPCA/various other animal 'welfare' organisations are the worst people in the world for whipping up opinions or criticising various people and/or circumstances, well before they've bothered availing themselves fully of the facts. I'm fed up of it; why don't we just ban racing in all formats, it's the only way to keep them happy. Mind you then they'd move onto any horses being kept for riding purposes, then any horses being kept full stop; then it moves onto any animal being kept as a pet....and, where the hell does it end?
 
I'm no great fan of the RSPCA. In fact had an amusing conversation with a friend who was refused a rescue dog simply because her other half works abroad quite a lot;

"In that case, we class you as single, and you could be bringing all sorts into your house, which makes it unsuitable for a puppy"

"Right. So I can't adopt a puppy, because you think I'm a whore. Thanks"

That's by the by though, and I have no problem at all with the comments above expressed by David Muir.
 
Four horses die in three different races on Good To Firm ground on a track that has had £50k spent on it to try and improve it's condition because some trainers already refuse to run their horses there. Coincidence? Seriously?
 
I don't know; none of us know for sure. Jesus Christ, the RSPCA guy said he walked the track beforehand and said he had no problem with racing going ahead; what were the track to do? I'm not saying it's not the track but I do have an issue with the RSPCA guy admitting he thought the track was ok on walking it and then being scathing about it after racing - yes, we can all be wise after the event, can't we? After all - and this is most pertinent - pretty much the biggest critic of any track/organisation in the game [Ferdy Murphy] gave it his blessing having walked it. So, seeing as so many experts passed it fit for racing, who are these people giving out about it now [with the blessed advantage of hindsight] precisely seeking to blame?!
 
David Muir wasn't scathing about the track after the event SL, he was quite balanced. Have you genuinely read his comments?
 
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I wouldn't spit on the RSPCA if they were on fire, nothing to do with above comments,

Did you know the RSPCA still uses captive bolt guns to put down dogs? No

They try to keep that very quiet!
 
Gareth Flynn said:
Four horses die in three different races on Good To Firm ground on a track that has had £50k spent on it to try and improve it's condition because some trainers already refuse to run their horses there. Coincidence? Seriously?
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certainly not, but I cannot help thinking that more and more horses truely unsuited by jumping are forced into this game. just look at all the novice hurdles - nearly every single horse in them is a totally flat-bred horse, and on the go since it was 2 years old. and I have noticed for some time now that more and more horses are unable to finish espc. the 3mile+ events. certainly a factor "contributing" to this horrible development I feel.
 
You only have to look at the build of most NH horses now to realise they are going the wrong way, you don't realise when watching them on tv but when you are up close to them especially at P2P's just how lightly built they are now

Compare a modern day NH horse to one from 20/30yrs ago & its scary
 
Aldaniti said:
You only have to look at the build of most NH horses now to realise they are going the wrong way, you don't realise when watching them on tv but when you are up close to them especially at P2P's just how lightly built they are now

Compare a modern day NH horse to one from 20/30yrs ago & its scary
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Cant imagine why that is! :rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
oscar shine in punchestown. fell right on the line fracturing his knee it said, and tried in vain to get up. horrible.
 
Crazyhorse and Aldaniti are spot on; TBs are getting more and more fragile by the day. As such it seems slightly disingenuous to me to make out that all four of the fatalities yesterday were entirely down to the poor state of the ground; something which I feel the entire RP article and some comments of this thread are more than hinting at, not least when within it Muir from the RSPCA is quoted as calling for the BHA to launch an enquiry, stating the deaths aren't acceptable [which no, in an ideal world they're not] and broadly hinting that even though he thought the ground was safe enough when he walked it, it clearly wasn't. Not only is there the fragility of the species to be considered, but the manner of how the injuries were sustained. On the softest, safest ground a horse can fall at such an angle that they will still fracture a limb, it doesn't have to be unsafe ground alone.
 
I tto think crazyhorse and you others have hit the nail on the head. Flat bred horses are not just going hurdling now either, they go chasing, and the percussion from firmish ground on more fragile legs is bound to be greater over fences than hurdles since the horse lands more steeply, putting more weight on the forelegs. This has a culmulative effect.

It's why old-school trainers like Henderson won't do summer jumping - I've heard him personally say what it does to horses legs and knees, and he trains mostly NH bred horses. In the old days horses were given time to mature too, before going jumping, and had a regime which built up bone and muscle in the legs with plenty of road-work etc. It's hard to know how this process can be reversed - like the push to breed ever more precocious 2yr olds, it's commercially driven.

And maybe fewer owners now have the knowledge of horses, their breeding confirmation etc than in the past, esp where NH is concerned
 
Let's remind ourselves that Wetherby hosted three fatalities at its April 26 meeting: BONNY BRIGHT EYES, LINLITHGOW LAD and APOCALOZZO all met their end, while in August, Stratford didn't exactly shine with its own treble of SOMETHING INSIDE, PURE MAGIC and JACKELLA. Look through any stats and you'll see loads of double fatalities at a single meeting. Market Rasen was reported as the course least conducive to its runners' health a year ago, with the majority of fatal falls, and I think on FF we did a trawl of its fatalities and found it did top the list overall. In 2007 they lost three in one go: BENRAJAH, KETY STAR and DRIVE ON.

We all know that there's almost no such thing left as a 'National Hunt' type any more - of the four killed just now at Wetherby, only one, DIVEX, is by what is a dual-purpose sire, TAIPAN, while the other three are all Flat bred. However, it's the two 3 y.o. maiden hurdlers, both tragically having only their second hurdles race, who stand out as the really vulnerable animals, as are so many who are chucked into the game following inglorious Flat careers. 8 y.o. DIVEX had 34 starts and acquitted himself with a total of 11 placings, while 10 y.o. MARREL was a really experienced campaigner in hurdles and chases, even though he'd begun on the Flat. He'd been hurdling since February 2003 and chasing since August last year, racking up 87 runs, of which 11 were wins, 7 were 2nds, and 14 were 3rds. No slouch.

Thus, in spite of the gnashing of teeth about the fragility of the Thoroughbred, two of the four were proving themselves adept and sturdy. Not that I'd like to think that only 50% of animals being faced with obstacles were capable of surviving the experience.

Racing loses around 300-350 animals a year in the UK, going by the notes I make for myself. It's hopeless relying on the RP for stats any more, and the Irish reportage is even weaker. If one imagines that there could be some 15,000 of the reportedly 17,000+ Horses in Training actually active at any given time, and while all active service deaths are regrettable and one doesn't want to be dismissive of any reason contributing towards them, it's probably not been too different for many years. I don't suppose anyone can do a comparison with past decades as that information would've had to have been taken personally, before the advent of 'Death Watch' and other similar sites.

But for all of our head-shaking about the passing of 'true' NH types, one only has to read the old in-running records of past Grand Nationals to realise that there were far more fatalities in those than there are today. The fact that many of those horses also hunted out and worked on roads didn't save their bones from cracking. True, it's a comparatively easier race now than in the 1920s or even 1950s, but we don't know how many amateurishly trained and equally ridden horses also perished in ordinary races in the past. We have a lot more horses now, and a helluva lot more jumps racing. It stands to reason that the ratio of injury and death will follow.
 
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