Are you thinking of going to the Cheltenham Festival? There’s a reason horse racing events focus on fashion, wealth, and champagne: all that “glamour” is designed to distract us from the horse suffering that goes on both on and off track – and the Cheltenham Festival is no exception.

Protested since 1830, the Cheltenham Festival is an archaic show of greed and animal exploitation, responsible for 76 horse deaths in the past 25 years alone.

Each animal who has lost their life for a bet was someone, a living feeling individual who deserved better than being whipped while running at breakneck speed so humans could make money.

Here are five reasons to give this grim Gloucestershire gambling event a miss.

Lajos-Eric Balogh / Action Plus Sports Images /Alamy Stock Photo

Killing Starts Long Before the Race

Horse racing is a numbers game. Stables repeatedly breed horses to create the next champion, but it doesn’t always work that way.

An estimated 13,000 foals are born annually into the British and Irish racing industries, but only half go on to race.

Those deemed not fast enough to be “worth” the time and money it takes to win are “wastage” and go on to be neglected, dumped on overburdened rescues and shelters, sold, or simply killed.

Horses Aren’t Fully Formed When They’re Ridden

Using any animal for entertainment is wrong, regardless of the animal’s age, but one especially egregious aspect of horseracing is that many horses start their “careers” at just two years old, even though most don’t reach skeletal maturity until around five years old.

This, combined with desperate jockeys goading horses to run too quickly and other cruel practices, explains why so many horses experience catastrophic injuries caused by falls, such as broken bones, muscle tears, and fractures. Injured horses are often euthanised because they end the animal’s money-making potential.

David Davies / PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Horses Are Raced to Death

In November 2024 alone, three horses died at a single Cheltenham race – Napper Tandy fell and broke their neck, Bangers and Cash collapsed during the race, and Abuffalosoldier collapsed and died after the finish.

Approximately 200 horses die yearly on British racecourses, and The Cheltenham Festival holds the dubious honour of being the site of the largest number of horses killed in a single day’s racing after six horses died there on March 16, 2006.

Tim Graham /Alamy Stock Photo

Drugs, Forced Breeding, Whips: Cheltenham Is Sadistic

Whipping horses is such an obvious form of animal abuse that it’s mindboggling that it still happens at all, but jockeys at Cheltenham are  required to carry whips, and riders may whip a horse seven times in a jump race.

Plenty of cruelty also happens off-track. Female horses are forcibly bred using all manner of restraints – including hobbling their legs and painfully tying their lips – to stop them from struggling or kicking their unwanted mount.

Horses are also drugged to enhance their performance. In 2023, Cheltenham third-place-getter Sandor Clegane was disqualified after testing positive for a banned substance, while leading trainer Ed Dunlop was disqualified from racing for one year after Lucidity tested positive for a metabolite of cocaine at Brighton in the same year.

David Jones / PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

“Retirement” Often Means Slaughter

When horses are no longer profitable, they’re divested from their stables. The horseracing industry likes to pretend this means resting in green grass, but many horses used in races become meat for humans or companion animals.

One investigation released by PETA documented horses being live exported and violently killed in South Korea. The RTÉ documentary Horses: Making A Killing, filmed at Ireland’s major horse slaughterhouse, revealed that sensitive horses were hit with pipes until they collapsed. Of those killed, 71% were thoroughbreds from the racing industry, and some were killed just days after their last race.

L214 - Ethics & Animals