National Racehorse Week is coming to the UK from 22nd to 31st August, 2026 and it is the perfect reminder why we should be questioning the entire premise of horse racing.
Presented as an opportunity to celebrate these magnificent animals and showcase the world of racing, it is really another glossy PR exercise designed to keep alive the myth that forcing horses to race is noble, thrilling, and somehow good for the animals involved.
It isn’t.
Horse racing is cruel, unnecessary, and built around exploiting vulnerable, sentient animals for human entertainment and profit.
Read more below.
Animal Aid, which campaigns to end horse racing, works hard to document the reality behind the industry’s carefully polished image.
The organisation has helped me understand that horses endure gruelling training regimes, are routinely whipped, and are subjected to equipment designed to control and manipulate their bodies. They can suffer horrific injuries including broken necks and backs, bleeding lungs, heart attacks and spinal paralysis. Animal Aid’s Horse Death Watch records more than 3,000 horses killed as a result of injuries sustained on British racecourses since 2007, and that figure does not include horses killed in training or those who never make the grade.
When the industry talks about excitement, I cannot help thinking about the animal whose body is being pushed to its limits so that humans can place bets and cheer from the stands.
And then there is the whip.
According to Animal Aid, horses are the only animals whose regular public beatings are televised for entertainment. The British Horseracing Authority currently permits jockeys to whip horses a set number of times during races, with six permitted in a flat race and seven in a jump race. Animal Aid argues that whipping hurts horses and is used to force a performance from an animal already running at speed. Somehow, the racing industry has managed to make this look like sport rather than what it actually is. It is an animal being physically compelled to perform for us.
You can dress it up with champagne, fascinators, and a grandstand full of cheering people, but none of that changes what is happening to the horse.
The suffering also doesn’t begin or end on race day.
Animal Aid highlights the separation of foals from their mothers, the intensive breeding practices used to produce future racehorses, and the uncertain fate of horses who no longer make money for the industry. Around 13,000 foals are born each year into the British and Irish racing industries, yet many will never even reach a racecourse.
Animal Aid says the resulting surplus of unwanted horses can leave them vulnerable to being bought and sold at auctions, neglected, or ultimately sent to slaughter. This is the part that gets conveniently left out of the National Racehorse Week fairy tale. Behind the photographs, sponsorships, and carefully managed visits are individual animals whose lives are treated according to their usefulness to humans. Their value should never depend on whether they can win a race or make somebody money.
So while National Racehorse Week invites us to celebrate an industry, I think it is worth asking who gets to choose whether they participate. The horses certainly don’t. They cannot choose whether they are bred, trained, raced, whipped, bought, sold, or discarded.
We can choose whether we attend races and whether we place bets. Animal Aid is asking people to use that choice by signing its pledge not to bet on horse racing or attend races. If you care about horses, don’t let the racing industry’s glossy celebration tell you that exploitation is entertainment.
Learn more about horse racing from Animal Aid online here and consider standing with the animals by signing the Animal Aid pledge to reject the sport.
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