Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It'll be the only one trying
Okay, here it is. I am a racing fan. My wife and kids owns gallopers, pacers and dogs. We are not babes in the woods, and we understand the go. But shooting horses in the head with a .22 and then cutting them up with a chainsaw is too far beyond the pale for us […]
Ben Yole trained 25 of the 58 starters in seven races at Devonport tonight. In one race he trained 8 of the 10, in another he had 3 of the 6, in yet others Yole trained 3 of the 7 and 4 of the 10. Know how many winners he got? Zero. He is a […]
Regular readers of this site well know the story of the warhorse Masterati, the most over-raced galloper in Australia. (Those who don’t can click here to catch up on our stories about the horse who’s been flogged to death). Last Saturday we tipped you into Masterati at his NT debut over 1100 metres in Alice […]
HRA maintains a robust traceability database which was referenced in a submission from the Australian Veterinary Association Ltd to the Martin Inquiry which quotes, “EVA does concede that Harness Racing Australia has taken serious action on this issue in the last 18 months by making owners update activity status of Standardbred racehorses in ‘real time.’” […]
We wrote a story earlier in the week about RocknRoll Da Gama, the Lola Weidemann trained pacer who had covered more ground than his namesake Vasco the Dutch explorer, and had raced 11 times in a month. Well now its raced twelve. Australia’s most over-worked pacer stepped out at Redcliffe today, and in a damning […]
Ben Yole has won the past five Tasmanian harness race training premierships in succession. He wins these Premierships because he turns out ten times as many runners as any other trainer in the State. Yole gets all these horses – hundreds of them – from around Australia by either buying them out of cheap claiming […]
On Monday we told you the amazing story of how the most over-worked galloper in training Masterati – who has been racing non-stop since July, and had raced 22 times in just 29 weeks – was actually given a break of more than a fortnight in between races, which must have made the poor old […]
At exactly what point does racing a galloper excessively become an animal welfare issue? Can owners and their trainer race an aged thoroughbred week in, week out in races held on professional tracks, and still be said to care for the best interests of their horse? Those are the questions that need to be answered […]
Hang on! Yesterday we wrote a story telling you how the Tasracing integrity officials had violated their own animal welfare policy by allowing a Ben Yole trained pacer named Mach Charm to race 6 times in 22 days when the maximum number of starts allowed in a month is five. What the Tasmanian Steward’s had […]
That is black and white isn’t it? Unless the Tasmanian control body determines that running six or more times in a month is beneficial to a pacer’s welfare – which appears highly unlikely to ever be the case – the maximum number of times that a horse can race in any 30 day period is […]
