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RACEHORSE Sausage Roll obliterated the competition to gain a fifth victory in the Glenfarclas Chase at Cheltenham yesterday and is now tipped for the Grand National, but what makes the 8-year-old stand out from the rest? WWN travels to his stables to chat racing, life and his future plans.

“I suppose growing up with the constant fear of being sent to a slaughterhouse for meat was probably one of my main motivations,” Sausage Roll began our interview, now tucking into a bag of nuts following his win yesterday. “It was either run really fucking fast all my life or be destroyed by the stud farm”.

Spending most of his younger years on a stud farm in Tipperary, Sausage Roll detailed a tragic youth growing up where literally thousands of his friends and family members didn’t make the cut.

“When you see your half sisters and brothers being loaded into the back of a horse box knowing they were going on a cramped boat to Belgium, France or Italy to be killed for consumption, you start to realise that there might be something in this running around a track thing with a little man on your back whipping you,” the horse continued, referring to the 22,000 horses that have been slaughtered by the Irish racehorse industry since 2016.

By the time Sausage Roll turned 5-years-old, he was one of the country’s biggest names in the horse racing industry, winning race after race both here and in the UK, but he insists that he never let the fame go to his head.

“To be honest, I don’t get treated any different; I’m shoved on a cold plane every week and made run like a lunatic everyday,” Sausage Roll explained, now with a giant tear streaming down his face. “I’d give anything to be grazing and just running free in the wild. Instead, I’m making money for some corrupt sport, fueled by gambling addictions with the added chance of being shot where I lay if I break my leg.

Sausage Roll is due to race in the Grand National at Aintree in April 2019, before retiring and then being sold to an Irish slaughter factory later next year.