
Originally Posted by
dizzy
Its a bad and shortsighted idea.
What happens when the leader goes too hard and drops out, does the driver get off for a bad drive by telling the stewards I had to go that fast to make the qualifying time. What about the driver that use the whip excessively, I had too sir to make the time. Great image for the sport to see a horse that may be lengths in front of the others being whipped to ensure it runs fast enough to make a qualifying time.
It may be used in human sports Adam but in this country at least human athletes are competing of their own free will, incentivised perhaps by glory or finacial reward, our horses have no choice in the matter and are at risk of being whipped if they don't satisfy our demands upon them, yet we cant be satisfied enough now just to win we have to devise race conditions that maximise the demand that we place on the animal. Its 2013, how do we justify our obsession with how fast a horse runs, a quantifiable measure of the demand we place on the horse, to not only animal welfare advocates but the general public as well?