(27 July 2014)

Another two animals sacrificed to shore up an anacronistic pageant, increasingly unbefitting of a civilised country.
During the ’Giostra dell’Orso’ yesterday in Pistoia two horses had to be euthanised after sustaining fatal injuries. The hideous pictures of Oracle, running one lap of the race on three legs, badly upset many people, but not so the organisers of this insanity, for whom it was just a “fatal and unforeseeable accident”: yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Racing thoroughbred horses on a track that small, with bends as tight as those is tantamount to exposing them to the risk of serious accidents, since their conformation means that their joints cannot easily sustain the strains and stresses of this kind of track, in particular the sharp bends.
Furthermore, in such situations horses, noted for being animals who like to live quietly grazing in open fields, are catapulted into bedlam, every aspect of which contributes to terrorise and overexcite them: crowds pressing around them, yelling, crashing and banging, flags flapping, the animosity between the competitors, the tension of the jockeys.

The state of the track was declared suitable by the Fitetrec expert (see video) who, given his expertise will presumably be able to explain how it happened that the hooves of the two horses sank into the ground sufficiently to break their legs. We trust the Magistrate’s investigation will ascertain the Fitetrec expert’s responsibility, together with that of the organisers of the palio.

Other horses have died in Pistoia palios in the past, the last one in 2011 as a result once again of a hideous accident. And the year before that a horse tested positive for doping. This does not seem to be mere coincidence.

Friday evening the mayor, at a press release, declared that he was shocked by what he had seen, and said that he would like to suspend the event for at least a year. We ask him to go beyond lip service and blandishments about ’cleaning up the image of the city’ and to have the courage to take the civilised step of abolishing the exploitation of horses in a spectacle which in itself would be far more impressive without this almost yearly stain of tragedy.

Meanwhile IHP will lodge a complaint requesting that those responsible for this year’s tragedy be named.
"We ask the ordinary citizens who are not directly involved in the horse world to stay away from spectacles of this sort and to withdraw their support entirely, since real change has to be cultural rather than through law making", stated Sonny Richichi, President of IHP. "We must not forget, either, that palios are not the only competitions in which horses are exploited to death, and that there are strong links between them all: for example Oracle Force and Golden Storming were racehorses before being used in historic re-enactments."

VIDEO OF THE ACCIDENT (WARNING: THESE IMAGES CAN HURT YOUR SENSITIVITY):
http://video.gelocal.it/iltirreno/locale/pistoia-giostra-2014-choc-lacrime-e-rabbia-per-i-cavalli-ko/34751/35535


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