Having come from a family who has worked with horses as long as I can remember, I feel I can give a bit of insight on that side of things – horses love to run. Growing up on thoroughbred horse farms, every day I’d see horses darting back and forth across the fields for the hell of it. They’re treated like kings (or queens) on the farm.

Horse racing in and of itself isn’t cruel. Barring a couple of (from what I saw over many years visiting/working at Pimlico race track) isolated incidents which tended to be swiftly punished, even the horses at the track are treated well.

It’s simple athletic conditioning about 90% of the time. Typically, a horse will have a “workout” (a mock short-distance race) once a month to see how they’re doing, and an actual race usually once every two or three months (sometimes more often, but typically only if they’re racing in a lower class).

As far as steroids are concerned, sure, they’d help the horse. But if they were used, you’d have far more horses dying just to gain the owners some money, because they’re run too hard, trip, etc. The negative effects of steroids notwithstanding, it makes it hard on a body, and unlike a human, horses aren’t all that bright – they’d probably just run until they dropped. In effect, I think that allowing steroids into horse racing would -cause- cruelty, far more cruelty than a pat on the ass (which is essentially all the whip is to them) could ever cause.

-Eppy

its like if you were allowed to use an opening position database in a chess tournament. ‘ NO,U CAN’T DO THAT ‘, right?
competitions like that are for seeing what you can do by urself, and everyone has to do the work to get to that point, no shortcuts