![\"Horses](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.animals24-7.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Picsart_26-07-08_14-58-25-793-e1783547992143.jpg?ssl=1\")
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<\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 QUEENS,\u00a0 New York\u2013\u2013<\/strong>The ongoing FIFA World Cup soccer tournament,\u00a0 from which Team USA was eliminated on July 6,\u00a0 2026 in Seattle,\u00a0 and the June 28,\u00a0 2026 last race at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens,\u00a0 New York City, \u00a0may mark turning points in human exploitation of two of the world\u2019s fastest large mammals:\u00a0 kangaroos and thoroughbred horses.<\/p>\n Only time will tell about that.\u00a0 Both events,\u00a0 however, \u00a0spotlight how rapidly spectator sports culture can change in response to pressure on behalf of animals.<\/p>\n As intransigent as participant sports culture can seem,\u00a0 for instance in the persistence of cockfighting,\u00a0 spectator sports are a whole different matter.\u00a0 When public opinion changes,\u00a0 spectator sports change\u2013\u2013or,\u00a0 like greyhound racing over recent decades and as horse racing seems likely to follow,\u00a0 implode and die.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n \u201cAt its start,\u201d\u00a0 blogged Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action president Wayne Pacelle,\u00a0 who had apparently been watching the FIFA tournament and counting shoes,\u00a0 \u201cthe 2026 FIFA World Cup featured 48 national teams and 1,248 players on the official tournament rosters.\u201d<\/p>\n Among them,\u00a0 Pacelle observed \u201cperhaps just a single player in the tournament \u2014 Junnosuke Suzuki of Japan \u2014 who laced up soccer cleats made from kangaroo skins.<\/p>\n \u201cJust six years ago, \u00a0when the Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action launched the Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle remembered,\u00a0 \u201ckangaroo leather had been woven into the identity of elite soccer.<\/p>\n \u201cFor more than half a century, \u00a0the world\u2019s leading athletic brands had promoted kangaroo leather as a premium material for high-performance boots.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, \u00a0when we began our campaign in 2020,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle wrote, \u00a0\u201cthere were dozens upon dozens of kangaroo-skin shoe models lining store shelves around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerations of players had come to believe that if you wanted to play like the pros, you needed boots made from kangaroo leather.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n The collapse of thoroughbred racing at Aqueduct by contrast took more than 20 years,\u00a0 but only because the track kept itself alive by becoming more a heavily subsidized gambling casino than the locale of actual athletic events,\u00a0 be the athletes humans or animals.<\/p>\n The horses still ran,\u00a0 until June 28,\u00a0 2026,\u00a0 but ever fewer people looked up from gaming to watch them.<\/p>\n Recounts Wikipedia,\u00a0 \u201cAqueduct Racetrack, \u00a0in the South Ozone Park and Jamaica neighborhoods of Queens,\u00a0 was the last racetrack to operate within New York City limits.<\/p>\n \u201cOperating near the site of a former conduit of the\u00a0Brooklyn Waterworks that brought water from eastern Long Island to the Ridgewood Reservoir,\u00a0 Aqueduct Racetrack was opened on September 27, 1894, by the Queens County Jockey Club.\u201d<\/p>\n Repeatedly expanded and renovated,\u00a0 Aqueduct by 1981 even featured the biggest restaurant in New York City.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n But the horse manure surrounding thoroughbred racing piled up,\u00a0 the stench kept generations of otherwise sports and gambling-crazed New Yorkers away,\u00a0 and by 2022 the New York Racing Association was planning to close Aqueduct,\u00a0 hoping to sell the part of the 170-acre property it owns to offset losses and finance improvements to the Belmont Park track in Belmont,\u00a0 Long Island.<\/p>\n The 110 acres of the Aqueduct Racetrack that New York state owns are to be redeveloped with $455 million in capital funds allocated by the state in 2023.<\/p>\n The New York Racing Association hopes to keep Belmont Park alive by redirecting the former Aqueduct crowds to Belmont,\u00a0 just 10 miles east,\u00a0 but a similar pattern of consolidation marked the death spiral for greyhound racing,\u00a0 and most of the Aqueduct crowds of the track\u2019s glory years have gone to where none return.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n The anti-horse racing organization Horseracing Wrongs posted to Facebook in commemoration of the Aqueduct closure that it had since 2014 confirmed the deaths of 173 horses there,\u00a0 while \u201cCountless more horses have suffered and died over the track\u2019s history.<\/p>\n \u201cThe industry\u2019s \u2018fondest memories\u2019 of Aqueduct,\u201d\u00a0 charged Horseracing Wrongs,\u00a0 \u201cinclude horses racing in blinding snow, pounding through sloppy tracks, \u00a0individual horses forced to race more than 100 times,\u00a0 and bleeding from the lungs,\u201d\u00a0 suffered \u201cfor gambling and entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAttendance at Aqueduct fell from more than 42,000 people on opening day in 1959 to crowds so small that the New York Racing Association stopped counting a long time ago,\u201d \u00a0Horseracing Wrongs alleged.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n The beginning of the end for Aqueduct became evident on November 2,\u00a0 2006,\u00a0 when the New York Racing Association filed for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n The bankruptcy filing at the time,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 was widely viewed as a pressure tactic to oblige the New York State Racing & Wagering Board to allow Aqueduct to install video lottery terminals.<\/p>\n \u201cThe New York Racing Association has also warned the state that if it is forced out of business, \u00a0it would go to court over\u00a0ownership of the Aqueduct, \u00a0Belmont and Saratoga race tracks,\u201d\u00a0 reported Michel Gormley for Associated Press.\u00a0 The New York Racing Association contends\u00a0it owns the tracks,\u201d\u00a0 while the state held that the tracks were state property.<\/p>\n <\/a> Ernie Paragallo.<\/strong><\/em> The New York Racing Association more-or-less won that confrontation,\u00a0 but was tripped by scandal in April 2009 after 177 starving horses were discovered at Center Brook Farm in Climax, \u00a0New York,\u00a0 home of the racing stable of Aqueduct trainer Ernie Paragallo.<\/p>\n Convicted on 33 counts of cruelty to animals,\u00a0 Paragallo was sent to prison for two years and was barred from racing in New York state.<\/p>\n Paragallo allegedly attempted to sell his horses to slaughter.\u00a0 The New York Racing Association responded on December 11, \u00a02009 announcing that it would bar from competition any horse owner or trainer caught selling horses for slaughter.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Scandal struck again on November 3,\u00a0 2010,\u00a0 when three unlabeled syringes were found in the Aqueduct barn leased by Richard Dutrow Jr.,\u00a0 who had trained 2008 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown.<\/p>\n \u201cDutrow was responsible for the illegal syringes even though he was in Kentucky for the Breeders\u2019 Cup,\u201d\u00a0 explained Albany Times Union<\/em> staff writer Tim Wilkin.<\/p>\n \u201cThen, \u00a0on November 20, \u00a02010,\u00a0 a horse named Fastus Cactus tested positive for the banned drug butorphanol after a race at Aqueduct.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York State Racing & Wagering Board in 2011 suspended Dutrow for ten years.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n That fracas was barely finished when the 2012 Aqueduct winter racing season featured 21 fatal horse breakdowns,\u00a0 twice the reported fatality rate from previous meets.<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>Suggested New York Times<\/em> horse racing writers Walt Bogdanich,\u00a0 Joe Drape,\u00a0 Dara L. Milers,\u00a0 and Griffin Palmer,\u00a0 \u201cIf anything, the new economics of racing are making an always-dangerous game even more so. \u00a0Faced with a steep loss of customers, \u00a0racetracks have increasingly added casino gambling to their operations, \u00a0resulting in higher purses but also providing an incentive for trainers to race unfit horses.<\/p>\n \u201cAt Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens,\u201d\u00a0 the New York Times<\/em> team noted in particular,\u00a0 \u201cthe number of dead and injured horses has risen sharply since a casino opened there late last year.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York State Racing & Wagering Board responded in April 2012 by posting an online database of horse deaths, \u00a0accidents,\u00a0 and related information dating back to 2009,\u00a0 along with data going back nearly 30 years about fines, suspensions and other disciplinary actions taken against owners, trainers and jockeys.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n A gubernatorial inquiry into the horse fatalities at Aqueduct concluded in September 2012,\u00a0 Drape and Bogdanich summarized,\u00a0 that \u201cMore than half of the 21 racehorses who had fatal breakdowns at Aqueduct Racetrack earlier this year might have been saved had racing authorities more closely monitored their health and the liberal use of prescription drugs to keep them racing.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth racing officials and regulatory veterinarians, \u00a0who were supposed to protect the horses, often ignored signs that they were ailing and allowed them to race for purses inflated with money from the track\u2019s adjacent gambling casino, according to people with direct knowledge of the investigation s report,\u201d\u00a0 Drape and Bogdanich wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cThe investigation found that veterinarians and officials of the New York Racing Association often cared more about filling races that generate revenue for trainers, \u00a0owners and the racetracks than about whether horses were fit to compete.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Then-New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo had already announced plans to take over the New York Racing Association,\u00a0 described by Drape and Bogdanich as a \u201cquasi-public agency that oversees the operations of tracks at Aqueduct,\u00a0 Belmont,\u00a0 and Saratoga.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuomo alleged that the\u00a0New York Racing Association had been dysfunctional since its inception in 1955 and had been responsible,\u00a0 \u00a0Drape and Bogdanich paraphrased,\u00a0 \u201cfor decades of scandal, \u00a0bankruptcy proceedings and a previous state financial bailout.\u201d<\/p>\n Still,\u00a0 Drape and Bogdanich conceded,\u00a0 \u201cThe imperiled racing industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the state.\u201d<\/p>\n Under the newly reconstituted New York Racing Association,\u00a0 the Aqueduct Racetrack avoided trouble until April 2014,\u00a0 when an outbreak of equine herpesvirus put a barn under a week-long precautionary quarantine,\u00a0 just as \u201cseveral horses based in Europe are scheduled to ship in for the $1.25 million Belmont Derby Invitational and the $1 million Belmont Oaks Invitational races for 3-year-old males and females,\u201d\u00a0 the Daily Racing News<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n The European horses were to have been boarded at Aqueduct.<\/p>\nKangaroo leather soccer boots & thoroughbred racing in NYC,\u00a0 both now history,\u00a0 were both booming businesses not so very long ago<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nKangaroo cleats get the boot<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nCollapse of Aqueduct took 20 years<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nHorse manure piled up<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nHorseracing Wrongs<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBankruptcy<\/h2>\n
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(Facebook photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\nStarving horses<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nDoping<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBreakdowns<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nInquiry<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nQuarantine<\/h2>\n