It is currently 40 degrees in the shade here on Gozo. The air is thick, the sun is merciless, and the asphalt in Victoria is hot enough to burn human skin on contact. Yet, this is exactly the environment currently chosen to host the local street horse races.

Once again, we are witnessing the word "tradition" being used as a convenient, impenetrable shield to justify blatant, unadulterated animal cruelty.

The Illusion of Culture

When a society lacks the moral vocabulary to justify a barbaric practice, it almost always hides behind the concept of cultural heritage. In Victoria, this means forcing horses to stand, sweat (they even can't !!!), and sprint on a boiling tarmac strip in the dead of the Mediterranean summer.

There is no natural shade provided for these animals on the streets. The only respite they are offered from the scorching sun is being locked inside stuffy, suffocating metal transport trailers that effectively bake them like ovens. The physical toll on the animals' joints, hooves, and cardiovascular systems is catastrophic, but as long as the crowds get their spectacle, the suffering is entirely ignored. This isn't a sport. It is systemic abuse parading as a local festival.

The Exhaust-Pipe Exercise Routine

But this public spectacle is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a deep, fundamental disconnect in how horses are generally treated on this island. The baseline conditions in which many of these animals are kept border on the criminal.

If you drive around the backroads in the evening, you will routinely witness the local version of taking a horse out for its daily exercise. Instead of being properly ridden or allowed to roam in a designated paddock, the animals are tied with a short rope to the back of a rusting, exhaust-spewing pickup truck and dragged along the street. The horse is forced to trot directly in a cloud of thick diesel fumes, desperately matching the pace of a driver who is too lazy to actually engage with the living creature in his care. It is a grotesque display of dominance and neglect.

The True Metric of Society

There is a fundamental truth in sociology and ethics: you can always accurately measure the emotional and intellectual maturity of a nation by observing how it treats its most vulnerable creatures.

Animals have no voice, no legal recourse, and no unions. They are entirely at the mercy of human empathy. When a society looks at a horse panting on boiling asphalt and sees a fun afternoon, or looks at an animal inhaling diesel fumes behind a truck and sees acceptable husbandry, it reveals a profound deficit in collective compassion.

We can pretend to be a modern European nation, but as long as we use the excuse of "how things have always been done" to excuse visible suffering, we remain emotionally and spiritually stagnant. Cruelty does not become acceptable just because it is repeated annually.

I need to follow up on my post regarding the horse races in Victoria, because the reality of this situation is actually much darker—and far more violent—than just forcing animals to stand on boiling asphalt. The systemic negligence we allow under the banner of "culture" is not just abusive; it is completely lethal.

When you design a public spectacle with zero regard for basic physics or animal welfare, tragedy is not an accident. It is a guaranteed outcome.

The Physics of Recklessness

Take a close look at the actual route these horses are forced to run. The street leading down from Victoria to the roundabout features a severe, steep gradient. If you force an animal to sprint down a steep incline on hard, slippery tarmac, gravity takes over. The horses accelerate uncontrollably, pushed forward by the immense weight of the sulkies and their own momentum.

The catastrophic result? One of the young horses in the race lost control on this exact downhill stretch and crashed violently straight into a wooden and concrete palisade.

This isn't a tragic, unforeseen accident. Any engineer, any driver, and frankly, anyone with an ounce of common sense can look at a steep, paved downhill slope and realize it is a death trap for a sprinting animal. Putting a panicked, exhausted young horse in that situation is nothing short of premeditated abuse.

Death by Tourism

But the barbarism isn't just limited to the local races; it is heavily subsidized by the tourism industry.

Just recently, another horse collapsed and died right on the open street. Its crime? Being forced to haul a massive, oversized carriage fully loaded with oblivious tourists through the scorching, relentless Mediterranean heat.

The local carriage industry operates on the assumption that these animals are indestructible machines. They are forced to stand in the blazing sun for hours, breathing in traffic exhaust, only to pull immense dead weight across hot asphalt until their cardiovascular systems simply give out. The horse that died on the street didn't just pass away; it was worked to death, baked alive for a few euros and a holiday photo.

The Complicity of Silence

Tourists who pay for these carriage rides are actively funding this exact cruelty. But the ultimate blame lies with the local authorities who continually turn a blind eye to these practices.

Where are the animal welfare protocols? Where is the enforcement of basic safety standards for these street races? The answer is nowhere, because tackling the horse lobbies and the carriage drivers would require political spine, something that is in desperately short supply.

We can build all the modern infrastructure we want, but as long as we allow young horses to be smashed into concrete walls for entertainment, and draft horses to drop dead in the street for tourist change, the moral fabric of this society remains firmly stuck in the Middle Ages.