Sir, – The Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports (CACS) is calling for a complete ban on the cruel “sport” of sulky racing.
We do so with no disrespect to the Travelling community. While some Travellers may participate in, or condone, this activity, many more of them condemn it as inhumane and unacceptable, reflecting the wider public perception of cruel practices.
Sulky racing causes extreme suffering and distress to horses nationwide and also poses an unacceptably high risk to public safety. The horses are subjected to long bouts of running, during which they are kicked and beaten to enhance performance, pushed to the point of exhaustion, and routinely collide with road traffic.
Horses injured during the crazy “Ben Hur”-style careening along big motorways and small roads, are casually abandoned, even when their injuries are minor and easily treatable. These loyal and affectionate animals, that give such unstinting service to their human masters, are left to starve on the roadsides.
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Dumped horses with broken necks, still breathing, have drawn tears from witnesses. Not a week passes without a severely neglected, abandoned or savagely ill-treated horse being reported somewhere in Ireland.
Footage posted to YouTube shows just how reckless and cruel sulky racing is, with irresponsible racers zigzagging in and out between cars and lorries, heedless of the danger to drivers and pedestrians, the racers completely absorbed in their quest to be crowned winners.
Proposals by some politicians that sulky racing could be “regulated” and the drivers asked to wear high visibility jackets are pathetic – another example of “an Irish solution to an Irish problem” of the kind that led to coursing greyhounds being muzzled while the law still permitted hares to be terrorized, mauled and tossed about on the coursing fields.
Sulky racing is well past its sell-by date. Horses deserve better than the hell on earth meted out to them in this relic of the Dark Ages. – Yours, etc,
JOHN FITZGERALD,
Campaign for the Abolition
of Cruel Sports
Callan, Co Kilkenny.