5 minute read
....Girls aloud
Cathy Grassick is not happy
THE NEWS that yet again Panorama is to feature racing (will have been aired by the time you read this) in one of its programmes has really bothered me this week.
Racing as a sport seems to be an easy target for this type of sensationalist journalism that likes to target a small minority of wrongdoers and spin it to the general public as the status quo.
This type of exposé has rarely tried to discover the true side of the story and to offer a balanced view of our industry.
The detractors of horseracing don’t even begin to try to understand that we are not just some callous, money-making activity, but instead is a vital rural bloodstock industry that provides hundreds of thousands of jobs across Europe, frequently in rural areas where otherwise there would be little or no sources of vital employment or investment.
We are a community of people who love their equine charges caring for them to the highest of standards, frequently better than we look after ourselves. We are also committed to finding other careers or homes for these horses once they retire or are no longer competitive racehorses.
Retired racehorses are versatile and intelligent animals who can excel in many different disciplines off the track such as showjumping, eventing, dressage, showing, polo, polocrosse, hunting, in racing schools, and even just as pleasure riding horses or field companions.
The more famous retirees have also become tourist attractions across the world at top-class facilities such as the Irish National Stud, the National Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket, Living Legends in Melbourne, Australia and Old Friends Equine in Kentucky.
Godolphin has its own programme called Godolphin Lifetime Care and has branches based in America, Australia, Europe and Japan.
Organisations such as RoR in the UK and Treo Eile in Ireland, as featured in last month’s issue of International Thoroughbred, are dedicated to providing a competition structure and assisting people who take on a racehorse for another discipline. There are also so many great charities who do excellent work that are supported from within the industry such as HEROS and IHWT.
One of the newer areas in which retrained thoroughbreds have excelled is Equine Assisted Therapy, which can be used in a variety of ways assisting people with educational and learning difficulties and those with needing therapeutic help to overcome their difficulties.
Former racehorses are excelling in this area due to their intelligent and sensitive nature. HorseBack UK, for example, is a charity that has been assisting military personnel, helping those servicemen and women overcome both physical and mental injuries. In some countries there are also programmes in which former racehorses are even being used to help rehabilitate prison inmates and give them new skill sets.
Sadly, these things don’t sell newspapers or make headlines or prevent one-sided television exposés that claim to know the “hidden truth”. Even some of our own industry publications have been guilty of being more interested in painting our sport in a poor light rather than exalting the hard work and dedication of those people rehoming and retraining and caring for our racehorse population once they leave training.
Those in the bloodstock industry are only too aware of the love and dedication that is put in every day by so many hardworking people and charities and we need to do as much as possible to ensure this message is heard loud and clear, while at the same time clamping down hard on those that do not do enough and do not look after their charges.
We need to provide the funds required to support the excellent work being done and ensure that those who do not live up to the standard are educated or reprimanded to prevent further “bad outcomes”.
THIS CAUSE is one that is dear to my heart having successfully rehomed and retrained so many horses who are no longer racing or breeding. My own Moores Law won six races and €90,000 and competed at both showjumping and showing successfully and gave me the best day when we won our first rosette at the Royal Dublin Horse Show. He was a real character and an occasional challenge, but he was the horse of a lifetime.
Gemma Tattersall has enjoyed amazing success on her ex-racehorse Artic Soul, who though not a particularly talented racehorse, scaled the highest levels of the eventing world to represent Britain.
The Group 1 winner Grandeur, who has been retained by his owner Yvonne Jacques after racing, was retrained to the showing world by the great Jo Bates to win a championship at HOYS.
When one speaks of the high standards of care given by the hardworking people in our industry one need only look to the Godolphin Stud and Stable Staff award winners who are celebrated around the world.
The most recent awards took place in Ireland and there were so many deserving winners such as Helen O’Sullivan for her years of dedication to RACE, Anne O’ Connor, racing secretary to Michael Halford, and Emmett Raher, who is head lad to trainer Henry De Bromhead.
The winner of the leadership award for stable staff and the overall winner of the Irish Excellence Award went to the amazing Valerie Keatley, who is head girl for Johnny Murtagh.
In floods of tears she said: “I eat, sleep and breathe horses so it was a huge honour to be nominated and be chosen as one of the finalists.
“It’s just unbelievable – I’m over the moon.”
