Horses in competitive sports face welfare risks from overtraining, lameness, respiratory disease, and practices that mask pain to enable continued competition, requiring welfare-focused regulatory reform.
Competition horses face welfare harms from training regimes that prioritise performance over wellbeing, medication practices that mask pain enabling dangerous continued competition, and management practices in conflict with equine social and behavioural needs. Catastrophic musculoskeletal injuries causing euthanasia represent the visible endpoint of underlying welfare compromises. Gastric ulcers in the vast majority of competing horses reflect endemic stress from stabling, transportation, and training regimes. Welfare-focused racing and sport horse management requires structural reform of training, medication, and competition rules.