Animal extremists plumb new depths in wake of Clouds death

This newspaper typically declines to give animal rights extremists the oxygen of publicity, but today I would like to make an exception. As events around the world continue to demonstrate, refusing to engage with extremists is not a viable long-term strategy. They must be challenged, rebutted and exposed on an ongoing basis.

Last weekend Animal Aid, a campaign group with strong anti-racing views, used the death of Many Clouds at Cheltenham to advance its cause. It did so by making assumptions and ignoring inconvenient facts in a cynical attack that exposed it as an opportunist organisation less concerned with the genuine welfare of racehorses than with making political capital out of their deaths.

Last Saturday, the breath had barely died from Many Clouds' muzzle before Animal Aid's 'horse racing consultant' Dene Stansall issued a shameless told-you-so to reporters. He claimed to have sent the BHA a letter last year calling for Many Clouds to be banned from racing and containing a threat, now acted upon, that his organisation would attempt to hold the regulator responsible in the event this baseless demand was ignored and Many Clouds one day died on a racecourse.