Retiring Racehorses

Joe Drape's interesting article about the lives of retired thoroughbred horses here has just reminded me about the similarity between retired racehorses and athletes. The first comparable feature is that both racehorses and professional athletes compete for prizes in sports disciplines with a very fat tailed curves. In essence, a very small proportion of athletes and racehorses win a majority of the prizes available both in volume of races or overall value of prizes. In the story of the Tour of the Cat, one is not surprised that this racehorse won US$ 1.1 million over a nine year career and is already unfit to compete further due to injury and advanced age. It is quite akin to the work life of professional athletes who earn the large portion of their incomes early in life and are often forced into retirement by age, injury and often by both.

The comparison breaks down because retired athletes receive financial advise and are able to keep aside some cash for their retirement while the money that is won by horses is often fully taken over by their owners. So whereas both have retirement homes of sorts, the horses do really badly because with broken down bodies and increasingly injury prone, they are conveniently taken for slaughter or auctioned off to kind keepers. Still, it is worthy of mention that a number of athletes end up being destitute as well in spite of their incomes. Again, the solution here may involve mandated savings for horses as well since many sports franchises require athletes to receive assistance with planning that for their retirement. A pity that it would be difficult to impose that on horse owners who may appropriate the entire race income and dispatch the horse back to an undignified retirement.

The reason for this tendency to abandon horses is clear. Competition is so intense that the owners of racehorses have to nurture several horses but only manage to recoup profits from a much smaller number of winners. Aging or injured horses are then caught in this game of numbers and are dispensable. Sad but a fact.