Drugs
Trainers and veterinarians keep injured horses racing by giving them a variety of legal drugs to mask pain and control inflammation. This leads to breakdowns because the drugs enable the horses to run when they should be recovering. Not all drugs are actually legal though. Many illegal drugs are also used in horse racing, some being bronchodilators to widen air passages, hormones to increase oxygen, cone snail or cobra venom injected into a horse’s joints to ease pain and stiffness, and a "milkshake" of baking soda, sugar, and electrolytes delivered through a tube in the horse’s nose to increase carbon dioxide in the horse’s bloodstream to make them less tired. There are even batteries that are hidden in a racehorses' skin and send out an electric shock when the horse is not running fast enough. Many winning horses have been given drugs to keep them going: Big Brown, the horse who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, and was on his way to win the Belmont Stakes (then he would have won the coveted Triple Crown) was discovered to be racing on plenty of different drugs. The drugs made such a difference that when the horse entered the Belmont Stakes without any drugs, he placed last. The drugs listed in this paragraph are only some of the drugs that exist in horse racing. It is estimated that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of other illegal drugs in the racing industry.