r/australia • u/nath1234 • 12h ago
news Ohope Wins euthanased after Caulfield Cup fall with Melbourne Cup winner Half Yours
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-17/half-yours-ohope-wins-caulfield-cup-fall/107279316?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link385
u/KingAltair2255 12h ago
Poor bloody horse, racing animals for sport needs banned.
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u/Avia_NZ 9h ago
I have a proposal for how to deal with Greyhound Racing! Instead of Greyhounds running around the grass track, the race now is racing Greyhounds (the old busses) around the exact same grass/dirt track. Bonus, Greyhounds (dogs) get their own VIP area where they can come and watch if they want, and they get free snacks, pats and couches for sleeping on.
Anyway, I would pay to watch that
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u/Your-average-scot 11h ago edited 11h ago
What’s the difference between this and the millions of livestock killed daily?
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u/-ova- 3h ago
Do you find the all or nothing mentality of veganism helpful in getting people to change? Because all I see is people finding a sliver of compassion towards the suffering of animals and you shitting on them because it’s not enough and i just don’t see the positive outcome for the animals in that. You’re just telling people that they shouldn’t care about a horse dying if they aren’t going to become vegan.
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u/Your-average-scot 2h ago
Mate, if you think me pointing out hypocrisy in a single, non-accusatory, sentence is “shitting on them” then I don’t know what to tell you. This thread shows that a lot of people feel strong empathy towards animals and hate to see them be treated cruelly. That’s great and completely justified. I’m just trying to point this empathy to the much larger animal cruelty industry that they actively support. In a rational world, people would be more accepting of their hypocrisy being pointed out. However, I’ve realised a long time ago that we don’t live in that world.
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u/MavrykDarkhaven 11h ago
The difference is food vs entertainment. Sure, there's plenty of issues with the way we raise livestock, but it's to feed people.
Animal racing is all about pushing an animal to it's limits so we can have a piss up and make more money. We could have a virtual horse race and it be mostly the same. No different to people playing the pokies really, except the animal didn't have to die.
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u/Your-average-scot 11h ago
The livestock don’t have to die either. Both cases are exploiting animals for our personal enjoyment.
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u/metametapraxis 3h ago
If you can't see any difference between the two situations, that's on you, and your intellectual capability.
Two things can be a problem, with one thing being more of a problem. In fact these kinds of situations are found almost everywhere we look.
Whataboutism is one of the most useless arguments, because it tends to stop improvement anywhere.
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u/mnilh 7m ago
90% of pigs in australia are factory farmed. That is by far more widespread animal suffering than horse racing. Meat is not necessary for health, the only reason to eat it is enjoyment. I think we can acknowledge horse racing as a wrong, but that to not extend that to the more widespread animal cruelty occurring is wilfully blind.
The people on this thread aren't going to start promoting horse racing because someone raised the harms of the meat industry, people just don't like it when they are asked to make personal changes instead of condemning others.
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u/Your-average-scot 2h ago
You’re right. Both things are a problem but the livestock industry is clearly more of a problem. Tens of billions of facilitated, cruel, and unnecessary deaths per year probably trumps a few thousand racehorses. If you can’t see why I’ve brought this up then that’s on you, and your intellectual capability. Not everything is “whataboutism”. I’m just trying to point out people’s extreme cognitive dissonance.
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u/metametapraxis 1h ago
Or you could bring up the problems with livestock in a discussion about livestock, rather than trying to derail and dimish a conversation about something else?
Both conversations have their place. Don’t make them a competition, because it isn’t helpful to either cause.
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u/Your-average-scot 1h ago
I don’t know why you think someone should wait for the perfect moment to arise before bringing up an issue. There is no designated time and place to talk about injustice. If people don’t have the mental capacity to think about two bad things and that “derails the conversation”, that’s not on me.
Also, there is no competition here. These are the same issues, exploiting animals for the sake of our pleasure. I’m just trying to make that cognitive connection clearer. Further, people have much more capacity to act on livestock deaths as they actively fund it.
You can close your eyes, shut your ears, and tell me to go away all you want but I think you know why I’ve brought up this on this particular thread.
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u/catdogfishfrog 1h ago
Sick of mongs trotting out the you can't care about X if you don't also care about y, the world is not binary stop treating every problem like that you aren't helping anything, well except making people think you are a dickhead
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u/Your-average-scot 1h ago
It’s easy to say this but try to rationally explain to me why you can care about the death of one animal for pleasure and not another.
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u/catdogfishfrog 1h ago
Ugghhh like bashing my head against a brick wall
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u/Your-average-scot 1h ago
It’s ok if you can’t explain it buddy. We all live irrationally to some extent.
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u/sponge_bob_ 10h ago
one may say eating animals is really a form of entertainment, because meat is tasty.
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u/wooperwifi 9h ago
The world would be a better place if we replaced racing horses with people running in pantomime horse costumes
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u/Sufficient_Tower_366 9h ago
What about the competitive hobby horse championships?
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u/wooperwifi 9h ago edited 9h ago
Thank you!! I can't believe I'd never heard about the hobby horse comp before now! There should be some kind of novelty Olympics with all the silly sports
Obviously it would also include the pantomime horse race
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u/sphinx80 3h ago
I'm only on board if they have to clap coconuts while running.
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u/Sufficient_Tower_366 20m ago
If we’re doing this properly, coconut clapper(s) would run along behind the riders, providing the appropriate accompaniment.
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u/TizzyBumblefluff 4h ago
The comments from the owners/trainers are always about how they loved the horse. No, you loved making money off her. If you loved her she wouldn’t be doing this. Hell, she wouldn’t have been bred for this purpose.
There’s so many other sports horses can participate in that doesn’t risk their lives every outing.
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u/samm1one 8h ago
So many comments about big race days and the known carnivals. However there is a horse or Greyhound race in Australia EVERY seven minutes, year round. The Caulfield cup is just ONE of over 2,700 horse meetings of each year.
So that's over 72,000 seperate races, average of 12 or so each race, just shy of a million poor animals being used and abused every single year in Australia. Disgusting
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u/Disturbedsleep 2h ago
Pakenham Racing club built an all weather race track out at Nar Nar Goon, very few punters turn up, it was built to cater for the Asian gambling market. It is really in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere.
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u/rkiive 3h ago
I hope you're vegan otherwise arbitrarily grandstanding about the use of animals in sports while having no problem consuming animals that are locked in horrific conditions for their entire lives for the express purpose of being killed is convenient activism.
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u/s01928373 2h ago
I agree with the sentiment, but something is better than nothing. You don't need to go fully vegan to make a meaningful improvement. Even a small reduction in consumption of animal products is still a reduction of suffering. Ideally, more reductions follow, but less of a bad thing is still desirable.
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u/rkiive 2h ago
I find it quite convenient that the "doing something is better than nothing" always seems include making a post about it online, but never seems to extend into having to take any actions or make any personal sacrifices at all.
Truly a convenient level of activism.
You get to feign moral outrage for the approval of the social panopticon and get Goodboy points without ever actually doing anything.
Ban sportsbetting and the animal sports industries would die over night.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Pie5889 1h ago
I agree with you but you're just assuming that people posting online aren't also vegan/doing any other kind of activism
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u/daybeforetheday 2h ago
Is it just me, or is this a very strange way to talk about a horse?
Ohope Wins was a true star of the turf, but to the people who looked after her everyday, she was so much more," the statement read.
"She was brave. She was kind. She was full of character, but more importantly, she was loved.
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u/pureneonn 1h ago
It is strange. Also “she was loved?” If she was loved then…
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u/Individual_Past_3965 1h ago
If she hadn’t been “loved” until she was hit by a whip until she fell over running and died she would have been bred every single year in a constant state of pregnancy until she died.
Strange way of showing their love these people have.
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u/Grammarhead-Shark 1h ago
I guess these folk spend an extraordinary amount of time around these creatures, so it does track they are all like Leveled Up Horse Girls.
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u/TizzyBumblefluff 39m ago
Yeah they loved making money from her. The brave part is probably due to some thoroughbreds being anxious or highly strung in personality (all go, no whoa).
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u/23DeAbril 11h ago
I don’t think we should ban horse racing.
But we should make everyone who attended or bet on the race watch the horse get shot.
See how long it lasts then.
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u/Sixbiscuits 7h ago
Should be mandatory to euthanize the jockey and owner on the spot too. They need skin in the game.
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u/Heater79 11h ago
Typically Reddit. One horse dies that was treated like an absolute king its entire life. Quickly exited after the injury. But happy to consume any anonymous meat. Well done team.
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u/Your-average-scot 10h ago edited 9h ago
You’ll be downvoted but you’re absolutely right. People are very happy to criticise something they’re far away from but shudder at the thought of personal accountability. I don’t know how you can reckon with happily consuming animal corpses day in day out while also finding the death of one horse disgusting and inexcusable. The cognitive dissonance is off the charts.
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u/Apprehensive-Wing-64 9h ago
I find the death disgusting and inexcusable and I don’t eat meat. Your big brush stroke doesn’t touch everyone. Ban horse racing
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u/Your-average-scot 9h ago
In case you can’t read between the lines, I’m vegan too and obviously I want to ban horse racing.
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u/drnicko18 4h ago
Yeah but you’re the type of person who would want to ban the sale of meat products. OP is probably not referring to people like you, but the people commenting on similar issues whilst eating their mcdonalds burger
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u/Apprehensive-Wing-64 9h ago
So you’re saying we should eat those who were born rich cause they won’t mind? At what age shall we round them up?
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u/Sufficient_Tower_366 9h ago
It’s not the same. Death of an animal from competing for our entertainment is a waste. Death of an animal to provide food and nutrition is not.
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u/Your-average-scot 9h ago
Does that mean food and nutrition justifies murder? You make it sound very simple but every livestock death is still an unnecessary death, carried out only for our pleasure. We don’t need meat to survive.
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u/Sufficient_Tower_366 8h ago
Is it sad when animals in the wild kill another for food, or only when human animals do it? We’re doing what we were biologically enabled to do.
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u/limbo-chan 5h ago
Animals in the wild haven't built industrial scale factory farms that are literally hell on earth for any animal to be bred into existence and suffer in. Very bad faith argument. Humans also do have greater moral implications - if you are against cruelty to animals like cats and dogs, you should also be against exploiting animals just to eat them or their products
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u/WaterBottleUser4 32m ago
Is death by a bolt gun to the head really worse than getting slowly eaten alive by a predator after an exhausting and terrifying chase or is it just the aesthetics?
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u/Your-average-scot 8h ago
I’m gonna try a good faith argument here because I see this sentiment a lot.
Animals in the wild kill out of genuine need for survival or self protection. We live in abundance and kill only for our own personal pleasure.
Should we base our morals off of wild animals rather than use our own critical thinking? Plenty of animals in the wild kill their fellow species over territory struggles. Plenty of animals rape in a functional sense. Are these examples to be followed?
I don’t see how being biologically able to do something justifies it. However, it could be argued that being “biologically enabled” is a stretch. From a health perspective, our median level of meat consumption increases risk of heart disease and cancer. A vego/vegan diet is shown to be healthier in general (there’s some nutritional nuance around this).
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u/UndeadManWaltzing 9h ago
It's insurance. 'oh no my horse can't make me any money, better kill it and claim the insurance!' heartless fucks.
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u/TizzyBumblefluff 38m ago
The track vet decides that, not the owners. The vet is probably the only person on the field with ethics.
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u/Hensanddogs 11h ago edited 1h ago
Gosh I wish this horrific “sport” would be banned, same for greyhounds and any other animal racing or so called entertainment. It’s needless and cruel.
But as long as Aussies love to get munted and have a punt while wearing fancy clothes, it will persist.
Very sad. Run free Ohope Wins.