Is Horse Racing Sufficiently Supported to Survive?
What happened at the Breeders’ Cup World Championships in late 2019 looked like the end of horse racing in California, maybe in America. It was the twelfth and final race of a two-day series, at Santa Anita Park, the storied track near Los Angeles. Sixty-eight thousand people packed the Art Deco grandstand, the apron, the infield, the high-priced suites. The “handle”—the total betting for the day—was a healthy hundred and seventeen million dollars, but thoroughbred racing itself was on life support. Since the beginning of the year, thirty-five horses had died at Santa Anita. Public dismay had risen to the point that Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, had told the Times that racing’s “time is up” if it did not reform. Dianne Feinstein, the state’s senior senator, had released a letter calling the Breeders’ Cup races a “critical test for the future of horseracing.”
Outside the track, animal-rights activists had been heckling racegoers under a banner that read “HORSERACING KILLS HORSES.” They had a call-and-response going, street corner to street corner: “Horses don’t want to be forced to run!” “Just like us!” “Horses feel pain!” “Just like us!” Heather Wilson, a nurse anesthetist, wore huge fake eyelashes and an absurd cocked hat. “I’m making fun of the women who think that killing horses is glamorous,” she told me. “My hat is quasi-glam.” She had been arrested at a previous protest at Santa Anita. “Right now, our focus is on California,” she said. “Just get it on the ballot.” She meant a statewide referendum, which she felt sure would result in a ban.
