If you’re unfamiliar with the Netflix program Squid Game, it’s a series where contestants play children’s games and risk death during the competitions.
The Spring Racing Carnival is Squid Game for horses; each new race is a lethal contest. In fact, one horse died every 2.5 days on Australian tracks last year.
The Squid Games mastermind created the games for ‘amusement and entertainment.’ Such is the justification for racing horses.
And I can’t help but liken the horses being paraded in front of cheering racegoers, to the Squid Games contestants being paraded before their wealthy voyeurs, aroused by the very real risk of a sensational death in the ensuing minutes.
Squid Game has raised ethical questions and debate about what contestants are willing to do for money. Of course here in lies the difference between Squid Game and horse racing, as competitors in Squid Game have the choice to participate.
Thousands of horses each year who’ve survived racing without death by catastrophic injury are still slaughtered for their meat. Anybody who believes this process is humane is kidding themselves.
Winner takes all, losers die, and participants have no choice but to play. Squid Game’s radical meritocracy is just the same as horseracing.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
