“It’s an industry that pushes horses to the limit” – Libération

On Sunday, Haya Zark, aged 5, stopped mid-race and died at the Longchamp racecourse. Although this event was shocking, it is not an isolated case, underlines the Peta association.

This was to be his last race, before retraining as a stallion – nothing left to do but produce future champions. But Haya Zark will not experience retirement: the 5-year-old racehorse died on Sunday October 6 at the Longchamp racecourse in Paris, while competing for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. On Sunday, on the track, the thoroughbred was part of the leading pack. But he suddenly slowed down, lost the rhythm of his strides, looked disoriented, and stopped. The jockey who rode him, the British William Buick, had to bring him back to the box, where he died shortly after. He was the victim of a ruptured aneurysm, according to what his trainer, Adrien Fouassier, communicated. at France Bleu Mayenne.

Jealously guarded figures

An autopsy should confirm or refute this supposition, while, still according to Adrien Fouassier, the hypothesis of doping was automatically ruled out by the samples taken before the race. Was Haya Zark’s death just bad luck? Not exactly, for the communications manager of the animal protection association Peta France, Anissa Putois: “It’s an industry that pushes horses to the limit. These are animals that are often subject to injuries, cardiac arrests, pulmonary problems…”

Cases of horses dying during or after a race, euthanized after being injured for example, are indeed numerous, even if the figures are jealously guarded. In 2019, in France, 135 horses died during a race, according to an investigation carried out in 2021 by Release. “Unfortunately, when we are an animal protection association, this is something we see quite often,” laments Anissa Putois, who points out that for a highly publicized case like that of Haya Zark, dozens of others are not. In the United Kingdom, where horse racing is even more popular than in France, the Race Horse Death Watch site, managed by the animal rights association Animal Aid, has counted nearly 2,800 racehorse deaths in ten -seven years, a figure she judges to be around 30% lower than the actual total. For the month of September 2024 alone, the figure rises to 10 deaths.

A horse is “like a car”

On May 29, 2023, already at the Longchamp racecourse, a horse which had just injured its leg during a race was euthanized on site, behind tarpaulins deployed to hide the scene from the public. His killing had been the subject from an investigation by the media Vakitalaunched by Hugo Clément, casting doubt on the version according to which his injury was not treatable. A horse, his trainer replied to Vakita, “It’s like a car. I am the driver, but if there is an accident, if the tires have to be changed, it is the owner who decides.

“Racehorses are seen as objects, agrees Anissa Putois. And used to make profit. We start training them when they are much too young and their bones are not yet fully formed, so they are much more likely to have fractures. We often deprive them of what is natural for them, we do not put them in the fields to “prevent them from getting hurt”…” To fight against a “industry that exploits horses until they are worthless”, Peta is campaigning in particular for the abandonment of equine disciplines at the Olympic Games – and won her case for the modern pentathlon at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028.

The company France Galop, organizer of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, reacted to the death of Haya Zark in a press release: “The loss of a horse is always a tragedy. We deplore this sad event and we share the pain and emotion of everyone around the horse, and in particular of its owners Odette Fau and Georges de La Rochebrochard.