Many of you will have heard, seen or read the news that a Chuckwagon horse was euthanized after breaking a leg in a race at the Calgary Stampede on Sunday. In the past, I have been quite outspoken on this blog regarding the annual equine mortalities at Chuckwagon racing’s flagship event. Some of my posts attracted quite a lot of negative feedback from fans of the chucks, though as most of you know I am never deterred by flared nostrils or puffy feathers. However, a couple of months ago I wrote an in-depth article for Horse Canada magazine which caused me to reflect more fully on the topic. As I have found more often than not when I am asked to investigate a controversy, the more I learn, the less certain are my opinions. I don’t agree with the use of retired TB racehorses for Chuckwagon racing, and it’s likely I wouldn’t become a fan of the sport no matter what kind of horse was used, as long as there was a significant risk (which there is) of death or injury to the horses. But my inclination to paint all the participants as evil was more than a little tempered by the interviews I conducted on both sides of the controversy as I researched my article.
Happily for any of you interested in reading this article, it has been published on line this week to coincide with the Stampede. The article will be free to anyone to read until next week (and it is also printed in the July issue of Horse Canada), when it will retreat behind a paywall on Horse-Canada.com and be accessible through the payment of a modest fee. I encourage anyone with even a mild opinion on Chuckwagon racing to take a few minutes and read my article, which I am quite proud to say was approved as fair and balanced by both those who love Chuckwagon racing, and those who wish it would go away.
The article can be found here.
Let’s hope that no further tragedies take place to any of the animals at the Stampede this year.
