Well I splashed out with $1 each way on my 4 horses and won $3.30 back so down $4.70. Don't gamble in any other way (not even Lotto) so don't mind having a flutter now and again on the Melbourne Cup even if I lose. Hub & I went to the pub and found ourselves sitting next to a couple who had big money on the horses who came first and second. Don't know how people manage to pick so well. They said they won very big money last year too.

Very sad about the horse who died. I remember back in the 70's the favourite, Empire Rose ? Or Rose something, fell and had to be destroyed. I refused to have anything to do with Melbourne Cup for years after that but then started thinking about how wild horses love to run fast together and how race horses seem to be well cared for. Today though, before the race started I thought a lot of the horses seemed unhappy and seemed uncomfortable with the bits (is that the right word?) in their mouths. Feel inclined to give it a miss again from now on.

I have the same love for all animals including cats and dogs but not humans and in particular overseas cruel buyers of Australian farm beasts for eating.

Yes Abby frozen is the only safe way to have control over slaughtering.

One horse dead pushed beyond it's maximum and probably drugged and another with a broken leg and mostly likely will be shot later.

Sport of Kings or cruel c^nts??????

Yes more cruel races to make the rich very happy, they don't care a hoot about the poor horses --which are very high strung and nervous and hate racing --I don't support racing in any way

With all it's faults, horse racing is the greatest benefit for the survival, of those magnificent animals, mankind benefited greatly from animals.

I just abhor the Steeple Chase which in my opinion should not happen at all. and the use of whips. Surely if whips are banned the jockeys all have the same advantage (no spurs, goes without saying).

Race horses are in the main very pampered and loved, and re the one dying from heart attack yesterday - that happens to humans and all animals.

 

 

Well I certainly would not like to be pampered and loved like a racehorse and because of the glitz and glamour associated with it, many who think they are good people are dismissive about it.. as you can read by the comments.

There are over 30.000 of young thoroughbred foals and standard bred foals born each year in Australia. The number of Black Caviars that get retired to a nice paddock you can count on your hands.

After a colt is sold at one year of age it gets stabled, each greedy owner trying to fit as many as possible into the smallest space hence the horse is left without social and environmental stimulation.

Rather than grazing which is the natural food the horses get fed high concentrat of grains which in many cases  leads to gastric ulcers - Research shows it as 89% of racehorses with Gastric Ulcers.

Horses of all ages suffer from painful muscular-skeletal injuries, such as torn ligaments and tendons, dislocated joints and even fractured bones. This is particularly injurious to animals racing as under two year old where their musculo skeletal system is not yet developed for the racing training.

University of Melbourne found that 50% of race horses had blood in the windpipe, and 90% had blood deeper in the lungs resulting from exercise induced Pulmonary Haemorrhage.

Once injured the horse goes to knackery  whether it can recover or not as it is no longer suitable for racing and repair is considered too expensive - yes it is all about money.

Animals Australia recommend

Pledge to never bet on crueltyTake action against 'wastage'Help end jumps racing carnageIf you have friends, colleagues or family members who go to the races, please send them a link to this page. It will enable them to make an informed choice as to whether they want to continue to support this industry.

In an ideal world full of people with the one intent, the gentle treatment of all animals,      unfortunately it isn't, and their are sadists with pets who treat them cruelly as well as sadists training horses, just in case my point is being miscontrued, I am saying without horse racing/training etc horses would disappear from our world, which would be a tragedy. the car etc. has replaced the horse so they would be neglected or put down.

Abby I am not denying that torture and mistreatment happens just as it occurs with any animal that humans have as pets or use for other purposes to make money, it is just in my thinking, {I may be wrong} that the breeding, training and racing which around the world is huge, and is most likely the cause that horses are in the public eyes and still exist. Remove that and in your own opinion, what do you think the future would be for our equine friends? Remember what has happened to the draught horse, with the coming of vehicles.

The Australian Racing Board is the peak body for thoroughbred horses in Australia. There are many rules and regulations set in place to ensure that horses are treated well. Now it will be even more stringent following the tragic deaths yesterday. It would be whistling up the wind to expect that horse racing in this country will be ever banned. 

The Cup - that'll do meDateNovember 5, 201473 reading nowComments 329Sam de BritoColumnist

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Left behind: Cans, bottles and wrappers. Photo: Justin McManus

Will we ever look back and wonder why?Drunk Girls of Instagram the least of our problems

If you can focus through your hangover, take a moment to reflect on who in your office gets most excited about the Melbourne Cup.

If it's anything like workplaces I've graced, it's the pissheads and gamblers followed by the flighty types who get excited over everything except their job; you know - the ones who organise the cake for people's birthdays and come around with that big yellow envelope full of spare change asking you to "chuck in".

Racegoers leave Flemington a huge mess, leaving the last to go to wade through an ocean of rubbish. Photo: Luis Ascui

Like Australia Day and Anzac Day, Cup Day is a uniquely Australian celebration that seems increasingly about getting slaughtered on the drink.

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Lord knows I've got no qualms about boozing, yet its appeal is always diminished when the amateurs are out in force peeing and vomiting in the street - that's the women - while the blokes stalk around with a watermelon under each tattooed arm, aching for someone to hold their gaze too long.

In this respect, Cup Day is an awesome opportunity to get some work done and just stay out of the fray.

2014 Melbourne Cup winner Protectionist

It's New Year's Eve at 3pm with animal cruelty.  

It's a day when half of Australia dresses like the defendant in a one-punch assault case and the other half decides it'd be "fascinating" to wear a three dimensional depiction of the Road Runner's autopsy on their head.

It's best avoided.

As Bernard Keane pointed out on the Crikey website yesterday, even before the news that two of the runners in the Cup had died, there's also the plight of the "equine athletes ... forced to take part in being flogged around a paddock for the pleasure of 100,000 drunken halfwits".

It's always interesting listening to racehorse trainers talk about how much they "love" their charges and, in turn, how much the horses they steward "love" to race. 

Aside from the "she likes it rough" creepiness of justifying inflicting pain on another creature, there's the Dr Dolittle delusion you can know what another animal is thinking and feeling.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph rehashed this trope in its editorial today writing: "Thoroughbreds are meant to run. They thrive on it".

The obvious retort to this is why? Cannot that running be done without a dehydrated imp on top of the horse, caning them with a two-foot-long whip?

If a kid waving a flag at a horse can spook it into shattering its leg, what's that say about the animal's anxiety levels?

I don't expect anybody but animal rights activists to give this a passing thought because one of the great uniting themes of being human is we assume we can do whatever the hell we want with animals; they're here for our benefit.

To suggest otherwise makes you somehow bloodless or humourless.

The Australian's Chris Kenny wrote yesterday that people who'd question the virtue of the Melbourne Cup or horseracing "could suck the joy out of a birthday cake".

 Something tells me that birthday cake was made with full cream, factory-farm milk and butter.

If nothing else, the Cup is always a handy reminder Melbourne's conceit of being Australia's most "sophisticated" city is a case of pulling a skivvy on a bogan, if not applying lipstick to a pig.

The mounds of garbage and food left behind at Flemington, the drunks in tight suits in various states of repose, Geoffrey Edelsten in yellow satin proposing to his newest embryo, not one but two former Bachelors being feted in the corporate marquees and a spike in domestic violence statistics according to White Ribbon ... it's just so classy.

The day starts as the second panel of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and devolves into the third panel by about 4pm.

And yet, it's the horses that are the animals. 

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