Horse forced to drink full bottle of champagne (Video)

It is common for athletes to celebrate a win by popping some champagne — but one victory celebration has prompted outrage and claims of animal abuse. A video has emerged that shows a horse being forced to drink down a full bottle of champagne after winning a prestigious race on the Spanish island of Majorca. The footage was taken after the Manacor Grand Prix last week, and has been labelled ‘appalling’ by an animal welfare group. The horse is called Helen Llinartix and the clip shows the animal being held by its reins as a man empties almost an entire bottle of champagne into its mouth.

Even during the video, the horse looks very uncomfortable, and can be seen to pull its head away at one stage. Then, the man pours the final dregs of the sparkling wine over its head as the watching crowd cheers and claps in the background. The winning horse was rewarded with a cruel spectacle in which they were fed alcohol against their will. An animal welfare society slammed the man’s actions as ‘appalling’. Assaib – the Balearic Islands’ Animal Association – said: “The person in the video has been sanctioned at European level for doping several competition horses. He has also been banned from approaching horses and from training horses in France for four years and was fined £55,000. We have already lodged a formal complaint with the relevant authorities for animal mistreatment.”

The horse looks very uncomfortable

The man at the heart of this outrage has since claimed the horse was given a mixture of electrolytes and amino acids instead of alcohol, despite the fact that the bottle was a wine bottle and was fizzing at the top. Speaking to a radio station in France, he said: “The horse wasn’t tied up or forced to do anything.” Watch the video, when this man says the horse wasn’t tied up and it wasn’t a bottle of champagne, he is lying. We hope this horse is okay, and this man faces consequences for force feeding it champagne.