Gordon Elliott

I enjoy horse racing as a sport. I went to school with several involved like later becoming jockeys and horse trainers. One of my grandfathers was a groom and one of the first jockeys to race "inside the rails" in Ireland. I was never at Cheltenham or Aintree, but I once had all the official programmes and some unofficial ones of each days racing from both courses from about 1968. I since have passed all the programmes onto my younger relations as collectors items.

Pre Covid there was hardly a day passed that I didn't visit the bookie's for at least a read of the Racing Post. I don't gamble heavily; in fact what I do is hardly described as gambling such is the small amount I shove over the counter. I've always enjoyed the gi-gi's and am interested in the breeding, training, sales and racing of the horses as I am in trainers and jockeys and Rachel Blackmore whom I predict will be catapulted to infamy shortly after a huge win.

As for Gordon Elliott - he could do with some Media Training - he left himself down badly by sitting on that dead horse.
 
Ted Walsh

"At this stage he needs to make sure he is okay himself. It is very easy to put a nail in a fella’s coffin and kick a fella when he is down. He knows he made a major blunder and what he did is wrong. I’d say he needs a bit of help now.

"People will castigate him for what he did because it was terrible but I hope mentally he can be strong enough to get over it. It is a huge blow to see your whole life crumbling like a deck of cards in front of you. He has paid for it.

"His yard is gone, his staff will be redundant. He has 80 staff and he has the damage done on his family, himself and the staff. And the only person he can blame is himself. He will pay for it dearly for a long time."

Sums it up for me.
 
Leper said:
I enjoy horse racing as a sport.
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Horse racing is not a sport for the reason I gave already; a sport does not inflict deliberate pain or injury on an animal either by beating it or drugging it. Lots of parallels between the greyhound industry and the horse industry in that they exist solely to provide events for the gambling industry, a scourge on the country.
 
A racehorse gets pampered like royalty. It gets a few slaps on its considerable haunches for about 10 seconds every two months, but only if it is good enough or stupid enough to be in contention at the winning post. Ask any horse fending for itself in the wild whether it would swap places. And then the really lucky ones spend their retirement at stud. But I do agree that it is a tad unfair to deprive a considerable number of the males of their best parts.
 
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I find horseracing boring, in the same way that F1 is like televised traffic. So I can see why there needs to be rampant betting to keep any interest going.

Mr. Elliott did a bold thing, tbh the horse was already dead so if we take it there was no maltreatment of the animal while alive I'm not that bothered ('buck stupid' I'm sure Jim McDonald would call him, and I'd agree). I don't think the sport is inherently cruel, or that greyhound racing is inherently cruel (I do object to coursing though). Betting is cancerous, and needs to be very heavily regulated.

So anyway, time to lift the seige on Mr Elliott, we don't want him coming to harm, and there's all the staff who'd suffer as well.
 
Betsy Og said:
I find horseracing boring, in the same way that F1 is like televised traffic.
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Horseracing is a fantastic sport, there is no comparison with F1. Its questionable now whether F1 actually needs drivers, instead it is just a race between gigantic toy remote control cars.

Horseracing on the other hand is thrilling. Magnificent beasts.
I did lose interest in it when I gambled on it, and lost, again and again! So I have a rule of thumb, don't bet on animals, children or remote control cars.
 
Betsy Og said:
Mr. Elliott did a bold thing, tbh the horse was already dead so if we take it there was no maltreatment of the animal while alive I'm not that bothered.
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What about the parents of that poor animal, how must they feel seeing that photo?
@WolfeTone We have at last found a common position. I have the odd bet myself but I am such a poor loser that it is down to a real dribble these days.
 
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On that basis no sport is a sport. Even the cleanest of clean athletes endures significant and deliberate pain to get good at what they do. If that wasn't the case the Premiership would be a bunch of fat lads huffing about a field.
 
I think most animals would prefer to be ridden to being eaten. If anyone thinks that eating animals isn't cruel then spend a day in an abattoir.
There plenty of things done to animals which is worse than horse racing.
There plenty of things done to people which is worse than horse racing.
 
WolfeTone said:
Horseracing is a fantastic sport, there is no comparison with F1. Its questionable now whether F1 actually needs drivers, instead it is just a race between gigantic toy remote control cars.
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I find both of them boring except in small doses but they both require considerable skill from the riders and drivers.
I forget which author it was but someone said that motorcar racing, horse racing and Polo were the only real sports as the participant had a reasonable chance of getting killed. Everything else is a game.
 
Purple said:
I forget which author it was but someone said that motorcar racing, horse racing and Polo were the only real sports as the participant had a reasonable chance of getting killed. Everything else is a game.
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He'd obv never played as a corner forward against Kilkenny.......
 
WolfeTone said:
Horseracing is a fantastic sport,...

Horseracing on the other hand is thrilling. Magnificent beasts.
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When you go to a meeting though, they take off, they're somewhere in the distance, and unless you're that bothered who comes first its just a disjointed procession home. There's no great 'spectacle' to see. It's probably better on TV, same is true of golf....and cycling.
 
Leo said:
On that basis no sport is a sport. Even the cleanest of clean athletes endures significant and deliberate pain to get good at what they do. If that wasn't the case the Premiership would be a bunch of fat lads huffing about a field.
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What humans choose to inflict on themselves, or on each other, is very different to what we choose to inflict on other species purely for our entertainment.
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
A racehorse gets pampered like royalty. It gets a few slaps on its considerable haunches for about 10 seconds every two months, but only if it is good enough or stupid enough to be in contention at the winning post.
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"Wifebeater? Me is it? Sure, she'd get a few slaps once in a while but only if she steps out of line."

"Childbeater? Me is it? Sure they'd get a few slaps once in a while but only if they step out of line."
 
When racehorses are no longer wanted they are killed and eaten.

The slaughtered horses that shame our racing

An undercover Observer investigation has revealed the shocking fate of thousands of British racehorses. Now campaigners want new laws to govern the sport.
www.theguardian.com

All this hooha about sitting on a dead horse is just hypocrisy.
 
mathepac said:
I suspect most horses would prefer not to be beaten or eaten
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I eat meat. Not often but I do. That would kind of make me a hypocrite if I condemned horse racing. That's the point I was making.
Morally I shouldn't do either.
 
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