Beijing racecourse director Kevin Connolly has told The Racing Post that reports of 600 horses being culled in the Mainland capital is untrue. He said "we have destroyed 110 horses in this cull. Our plan was to cull maybe 500 of them & I might still do so in a period of time over the winter. But as it stands, we have yet to do so. I probably will do some more over the winter, I honestly don't know. The reason we do it is, it's the most humane thing to do under the circumstances to injured horses, retired horses, bad breathers or foals with poor conformation. They don't have a commercial future, so they are humanely destroyed. We do it at the end of every season, the same as other racing jurisdictions."

Meanwhile, international authorities have (unsurprisingly) had a bit to say about the reported cull.

The Thoroughbred Times was fast to reassure US race followers last night that: "China is not a market for United States Thoroughbreds. In 2004, only one U.S. horse was exported to China". (Not so helpful for Australia where the majority of horses were shipped from).

Meanwhile John Smales, the chief executive of the International League for the Protection of Horses said: "It is sickening to think of very healthy thoroughbreds being put down because the Chinese policy on racing is, frankly, in a muddle".

A local Chinese journalist has said the blame lies with the owner of the horses and not the Club behind them - their suggestion being that the plight of the horses has simply resulted from one man's bad investment. To an extent (and logically) there's probably some truth to that statement but to claim that the actions of someone who has spent (literally) billions of dollars developing an Industry in China is just 'a bad investment' (given the surrounding political circumstances) is a tad short sighted in my opinion. Anyway, if you can read Chinese the article is at the following URL.

A detailed article (a tad sensationalist but, honestly, what can you expect with news like this?) also appears on The Independent site at the following URL.

Sadly, the words in the 8th paragraph are probably the reality:

"It is all rotten public relations for a country that is preparing to stage the 2008 Olympics, for which the equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong as China cannot offer adequate quarantine provision. Now there will be binoculars other than those in the grandstands trained on the Chinese authorities".