Horse races are a spectacle of beauty, an exhilarating sport to watch, and a time honored tradition in civilizations across the globe. But there’s a darker side to these races. Many horses don’t come out of them alive and most will die before the finish line – and their deaths are deserving of our attention, not our silence.

In the backstretch, drenched in pinkish light, you could see that War of Will was starting to fade. He was lagging, his jockey’s whip lashing out in frustration. On the far turn, McKinzie and Mongolian Groom surged past him. The crowd went wild, and at the top of the stretch a chestnut colt called Vino Rosso made a sudden move on the outside. War of Will was unable to keep pace, and the race ended with Vino Rosso winning by a length.

A thoroughbred horse races with enormous speed, huge strides and hypnotic smoothness. It’s a spectacle that draws tens of thousands of fans to the track each year. Those fans are cheering on the winner, but the runners are also pushing themselves to the limits of what their bodies can take and beyond. They’re drugged and whipped, trained and raced too young and pushed to the breaking point. And even if they don’t break down, most are doomed to a cruel death. A great many of them will hemorrhage into the slaughter pipeline, where they’ll be shackled and shipped to Canada or Mexico, where they’re often brutally killed.

The board of a company that uses the horse race approach to choose a new CEO risks losing key leadership talent deeper in the organization. That’s because once a winner is anointed, the other senior-level executives who were vying for the position may align with the unsuccessful candidate. If enough of them leave, a company can be left with gaps in its organizational structure that are difficult to fill. And that’s an outcome that can have lasting damage to the company and its future. The solution is to stop using the horse race as a proxy for selecting a strong leader and instead focus on developing candidates through a broad range of functional assignments, stretch opportunities and high-demand roles. But that will require a change in culture and an evolution of the business model that puts the best interest of the horse first. And it won’t happen without the support of horse racing aficionados who are willing to listen to the voices of animal rights activists and of the public at large.