Talk:Grand National/Archive 2

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I notice that any mention of the fatalities, both equine and human have been removed from the article. A section was created on this based on the individual reports of every race from 1836 as reported at the time in the Liverpool Mercury, Bells Life, The Time and Sporting Life record the deaths of 80 horses and 1 rider since 1836. Each of these was documented in the article and can all be verified against the newspapers reports of each race. It has been stated that the article has been removed for the lack of a source. Each individual newspaper, page and date can be documented if necessary. However its removal does seem to have been motivated by a desire to brush this element of the race under the carpet somewhat as a similar section, sourced from the same material regarding the number of jockeys to have competed and those who have had more then thirteen rides without victory has been allowed to remain. The removal of the fatalities section turns this entire article from an unbiased encyclopedic article to a biased one. I believe the section on fatalities should be restored, not least to honour the eighty documented horses and one rider who have died in the race. Captainbeecher (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I stumbled across this article this afternoon whilst looking for something else (as you do) and I too was suprised that very little mention is made of equine fatalities, especially given that the race is always a focus for animal rights protesters. Assuming the info mentioned by Captainbeecher above is referenced, I see no reason why it should be left out, especially given WP's goal of remaining unbiased. TicketMan - Talk - contribs 12:57, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I would like to add information about the equine fatalities, but am struggling to find any reliable sources. A comment page on the Guardian's website cites "30 at Aintree since 1997" as at 5 April 2006: [1] This gambling website cites 57 in the first 162 Nationals: [2] while this gambling website claims 58 in 162 Nationals: [3] However, this news/blog site cites 80 in the first 162 Nationals: [4] Perhaps no one is actually certain of the number, but I agree that the high number of fatalities is worth a mention. TBM10 (talk) 14:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I too was concerned that the fatalities section had been removed, and initially suspected editorial bias. However, when I looked at it I had to conclude that it was mostly unsourced and innacurate — probably underrepresenting the number of fatalities, in fact! I have restored only the first sentence of the previous section, and added in couple more lines, containing three sourced facts. Please feel free to add to this section with more facts and figures — citing sources, of course. – Spudtater (talk • contribs) 10:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Update: I've reverted the "Horse welfare" section back to its original title of "Equine fatalities", and removed a whole bunch of parenthetical information about veterinary care, on the grounds that it wasn't particularly encyclopaedic. I have however retained a sentence about working with animal welfare organisations and reducing the severity of fences, and one about the bypassing of fences in the 2011 event. –Spudtater (talk • contribs) 12:14, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Please do not remove well-sourced and relevant information. The information about the veterinary facility improvements is interesting, well-sourced,

reliable sources. I shall use an unrelated but good example: if a pro-circumcision website stated that "one-third of all uncircumcised men will experience medical problems with their foreskin and eventually need to undergo circumcision" (as one does indeed ridiculously claim), would that be appropriate for inclusion on Wikipedia's circumcision article? No. Animalaid.org is clearly a biased source. --TBM10 (talk

) 12:50, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Animal Aid's Race Horse Death Watch website is simply a database of all horses that have died on UK racecourses since 2007. It lists the name, date, course and cause of death. It is a statement of evidence, not of opinion. Randominion (talk) 11:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The reason I have been linking to the AnimalAid website is simply that they have the most information about the deaths, as they document each one. The accuracy in terms of facts and figures holds up well when cross-referenced with other news sources, even if the editorial slant is clearly biased. If you want to add references from newspapers, etc., then that's fine.

Also, I have to disagree with the concept of seeking "balance" in the article. Instead, we should be seeking to minimise any editorial slant; describing, rather than moralising. Don't forget that you bring your own ideas of what is "neutral" to the article. A lot of people come to this article specifically looking for facts on how many horses die during the event, and so "Equine fatalities" is a very succinct section name.

I will try to work with you to improve this section, but please try to avoid spinning the editorial slant of the article. Let the facts be the facts, and the reader draw their own conclusions. –Spudtater (talk • contribs) 13:35, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit: as per your suggestion on my talk page, I've renamed the section to "horse welfare and fatalities". I think a better solution would be to have a "horse welfare" section, of which "equine fatalities" would be a sub-section. This would require significant re-writing, though; I don't have time at the moment. –Spudtater (talk • contribs) 13:44, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I have sought to cite Animal Aid's Race Horse Death Watch website in this article and it has been repeatedly removed on the grounds that it is a 'questionable source'.

In the absence of the race horse industry to publish any information on race horse deaths, Animal Aid have compiled their database of deaths on UK courses since 2007.

I will email Animal Aid and ask them how they verify the data that is placed on their database and publish the response here.

Randominion (talk) 12:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I do think there is a possibility that Animalaid.org could be used on WP, but to learn more about how they ensure their data is reliable will help. --TBM10 (talk) 16:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Reply from Animal Aid

I received this reply from Animal Aid:

Dear xxx

Our information is obtained from a variety of racing industry sources and every entry is carefully double and triple checked to guarantee its accuracy. We challenge anyone to come forward and demonstrate a significant error relating to any of the entries. There have been no such complaints to date. But, of course, if any such error is discovered in the future we will promptly correct it.

Kind regards

Andrew Tyler Director Animal Aid,

Randominion (talk) 09:04, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The long-time lead image for this article was removed recently. I thought perhaps a screenshot of the race in progress would be okay but it seems imminent that WP is going to delete that too. So I've replaced it with a map of the course, its a bit "pony" but it'll have to do for now! --TBM10 (talk) 20:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Is this article ready for re-nomination as a good article? There have been significant improvements since the failed GA. There's still work to be done, though, there are a few significant sections of prose that I want to tidy-up. Any thoughts as to what else could be done to improve? --TBM10 (talk) 18:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

There are still lots of references without title, publisher, publish date, accessdate etc. given. Suggest that this be addressed prior to any renomination. Keith D (talk) 22:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Keith D, agree the refs need to tidied up but I'm not an expert on this! --TBM10 (talk) 23:39, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

There are also entirely unreferenced blocks of prose - 'The Course' & 'Jockeys', and very sparsely referenced sections - 'John Smith's People's Race...' I've been gradually working through the inline citations myself for about the last year now, starting with 'History', but it's painstaking work, and there remains a lot more to be done. Rough Quest (talk) 09:54, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Referencing takes time but is worth the effort before any GA/FA submission as things go a lot smoother then. On referencing the lead tends to be unreferenced, apart from essentials, as it is a summary of the article so the references for it are found in the body of the article. Keith D (talk) 12:06, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I've changed the height of the water jump - it was originally shown as 5 foot 2 high, same as the Chair, but it is visibly the lowest fence on the course (and in fact generally the lowest fence on any British NH course). The map in Aintree's media guide does show it as 5 foot 2 but the description of the fence above it has a more accurate height - "2ft 6in fence" and "the only fence on the Grand National course to be less than 4ft 6in high". Some other sources quote 2ft 9in but I'll go with Aintree's own description.--Bcp67 (talk) 04:39, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Definitely Poethlyn in 1919 at 11/4 - I've provided a website ref for this now. I make it that there are 27 winners with a recorded SP shorter than Hedgehunter's 7/1 in 2003 and nine winners who share his 7/1 SP.--Bcp67 (talk) 08:22, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm giving up on this - apparently Hedgehunter at 7/1 is the shortest odds winner of the National. I can't be bothered to keep changing it back.--Bcp67 (talk) 08:29, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've tried to insert the last ten years' winners while keeping the link to the main article. It all looks fine in the preview page but when I save the entire table disappears, I have no idea why. So any of the more techically minded of you might like to have a go. Here is the exact wiki markup I used:

Rough Quest (talk) 11:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Great, so it works on the talk page, but not the article...damned computers...Rough Quest (talk) 11:39, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, sorted it now - phew! Rough Quest (talk) 12:04, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

There's no mention of the IRA hoax which led to the Grand National having to be done a couple of weeks later (from memory). Come on, people. It was a significant event, and I had to check the Independent's archives to find out which year it happened. What's Wikipedia for, eh? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.11.177.64 (talk) 22:31, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Err, you obviously didn't look very hard: Grand_National#The_Monday_National. --TBM10 (talk) 11:45, 28 October 2011 (UTC)