'It’s not just the horses that wear blinkers during the Melbourne Cup, the so-called “race that stops a nation”, which takes place next Tuesday [today]. Perhaps it’s the excitement, the champagne or the extraordinary speed of the race, but most Melbourne Cup Day punters appear blithely unaware that they are actually watching horses being whipped … and hard.
Last year more than 100,000 people attended the Melbourne Cup, with more than 3 million watching the race on TV in Australia alone. This would have to make whipping in horse-racing the most public form of violence to animals in Australia today, but most people don’t seem to notice it.' http://theconversation.com/whips-hurt-horses-if-my-legs-anything-to-go-by-33470
English painter and socail critic, William Hogarth, most graphically illustrates the whipping of tired horses in his 1751 engraving The Four Stages of Cruelty. His work shows youths already comfortable in their abuse of animals such as dogs, cats and birds. As his series progresses, it becomes apparent society as a whole is either indifferent to or encourages cruelty, and that this augurs very badly.
Hogarth’s images nail the nexus between animal cruelty and human crime and violence, and are as relevant today as they were 263 years ago. Images of horses being whipped on the streets of Victorian England are recognised as a major impetus to the birth of the animal protection movement as we know it today.
While the article from The Conversation above focuses on the cruelty of the whip, perhaps the greater argument is whether horse racing should take place at all. Is the training of horses to race for human entertainment justified, especially when it involves inflicting pain?
Image source