MANY people who wouldn't normally bet on horseracing have a 'harmless flutter' on the Grand National.

The big race is the climax of a three-day meeting that cost the lives of 30 horses between 1998 and 2008.

It is a deliberately punishing and hazardous event: longer than any other (four and a half miles) and presenting 30 uniquely high and awkward obstacles. It features perilous drops, ditches and sharp turns. Many of the horses will have encountered nothing like it before. Forty usually take part. This is an excessively crowded field, which adds to the risk of collisions and falls. Only one-third are likely to finish.

Readers will also be shocked to learn that, nationally, more than 400 horses are raced to death every year. They die as a result of racecourse or training injuries. Others are destroyed in their yards or killed at slaughterhouses after being assessed as no-hopers. Animal Aid's Race Horse Deathwatch website records all on-course equine fatalities, in order to make public the grim truth that the racing industry would rather remain a secret.

This 'sport' is only kept alive through betting income and racecourse attendance fees. Please don't back the cruelty – for you it is only a harmless flutter, but horses could pay with their lives.

FIONA PEREIRA

Campaigner, Animal Aid Tonbridge, Kent