March 23, 2019

Peter Scargill, writing for the Racing Post, reports that three Cheltenham Festival-winning trainers “launched a ferocious assault” on Nick Rust, CEO of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA). In their letter, they rebuked Rust for a list of faults, among them Rust’s recent comparison of racing to a sport like foxhunting—a blood sport—and pronounced Rust unqualified for his leadership role. What?

We publish this report not to judge the merits or policies of the BHA either pro or con, but to express our regret that horsemen of any discipline—especially a discipline like racing which is also a target of animal rights activists, and even more especially a discipline so closely related to foxhunting—would leap to disavow foxhunting in a pathetic attempt to distance themselves and curry favor with those swayed by virulent animal rights activism.