Injury Rehabilitation Ethics in Equestrian and Equine Athletes within the Racing Industry

With ever increasing popularity in the sport and pressure to win, the horse racing industry has placed an immense amount of stress on its athletes. Both the equine and equestrian athlete are placed in highly competitive situations, which push their physical capabilities to their limits. An athlete is a living being who is proficient in sports or other physical forms of exercise. Both a jockey and racehorse fit into the definition of an athlete, yet lack equality in ethical treatment. Throughout their training programs and competition, the risk of injury is high. In regards to health, decisions made for equine and equestrian athletes must be equally ethical. Post-injury treatments for each type of athlete vary depending on the injury, but measures taken towards the equine athlete are far less extreme. Part of the reasoning behind this is the stigma that an animal athlete, in this case the horse, is not as high of a priority in comparison to its human counterpart. Although there are some rules and regulations in place to ensure the safety of all participants to a certain extent, further protection must be implemented to ensure each athlete, both human and equine, receive fair and ethical treatment. As the industry places ever increasing stress on its equine athletes to perform, the risk of severe injury continues to skyrocket. This puts racehorses’ lives at risk due to a lack in ethical protocol that ensures their complete well-being. Although an animal, a racehorse trains just as hard as any other professional athlete, and deserves the recognition it has worked for. Included in that recognition is equivalent measures taken for medical care. Equal standards of care are offered for professional human athletes, yet top rated racehorses are being euthanized because it is still considered humane to end an equine athlete’s life due to a severe career ending injury. Although current research does not allow for further medical advances to increase the chances of racehorse survival post-injury, enhancing protocol to decrease risk of catastrophic injury to the equine athlete could have a huge impact on injury rates, and therefore the need for post-injury medical treatment. Looking forward, more must still be done to enforce the idea that all athletes, both human and equine, are of equal caliber and deserve the same ethical treatment post-injury, within the field