Fact Sheet

• Horseracing Wrongs estimates that roughly 2,000 racehorses die on American tracks – racing or training – each year.
• According to a “Wild for Life Foundation” study, on average 19% of slaughterbound American horses are Thoroughbreds. In 2015, 130,707 American horses were slaughtered in foreign abattoirs. That’s 24,000 recently “retired” Thoroughbreds slaughtered for their meat – just last year.
• Most active racehorses are kept isolated and confined in small stalls 23 hours a day, making a mockery of the industry claim that their horses are born to run, love to run. No affection, no stimulation – just an existence.
• The horserace itself exists, can only exist, through brute force – the primary instrument of which is a whip. What happens openly at the track would qualify as animal cruelty if done to our pets. What’s more, in what other sport do lashes provide the motivation?
• Racehorses are injected with various drugs – some legal, some not – with a singular goal: to keep them running, even through pain and injury.
• The typical horse does not reach full musculoskeletal maturity till around six; the typical racehorse begins “training” at 18 months and is raced at two – or the rough equivalent of a kindergartner. Most racehorses are bought and sold several times over during the course of their “careers” – traded and treated like common Amazon products.