Does the Cup represent cruelty?

As all Australians (and I'm sure many foreigners also) know, it's the race that stops a nation. It stops hospital staff, emergency services workers, politicians, everybody. And it's okay to let your hair down every so often, especiall if you've just won something (*insert image of jockeys fervently singing along to Daryl Braithwaite or Rickie Lee Jones*). However, I don't quite get why so many people want to dress up to the nines to go somewhere where they're probably just going to get truly pissed, but that's irrelevant. Behind all the glamour, publicity and tradition of the Melbourne Cup, what is it like for the horses themselves?

I don't just mean what is the race itself like for them. What is their life, which very few of us see, really like? Having to follow a strict training regimen and diet, often (I suspect) including growth hormones and such (which aren't healthy even for humans, and having to inhabit a stable rather than being free to roam open spaces alone? I'm not saying all racehorse trainers mistreat their animals either (although they could do more to stop those who do), but I can safely say I would find such a life very confining indeed. Then there's the nerves and discomfort many of them must feel on the race day, which brings me to the facts here. One of the racehorses that sadly had to be euthanized after the 2014 Melbourne Cup only met that fate after a flag he saw in the crowd sent him into a panic. Not to mention, after the 2013 Cup a mare that participated had to be euthanized because she broke her leg in the race.

These could have just been tragic accidents, or signs of punishing training regimens that had already taken their toll; I myself really don't know. I acknowledge also the dangers jockeys themselves face on the track (consider the race-fall deaths of Jason Oliver and Carly May Pye et al), and horse-racing remains much less cruel, with or without these abuses and tragedies, than dog-fighting or kangaroo-boxing. But surely the horse-racing industry, here and internationally, can and must clean its act up.