Last week, an illegal horse race raged through the country lanes of Palagonia, eastern Sicily, with participants armed with Kalashnikovs. After images of the race surfaced on social media, police arrested two people and seized the horses involved.
Source: The Guardian, Catania Today
The video, which was reportedly filmed last Friday, shows two jockeys driving horse-drawn carts at breakneck speed along country roads in the town of Palagonia, eastern Sicily. Behind them, dozens of people follow on scooters, firing shots into the air with Kalashnikovs. The images were posted on social media by animal rights activist Enrico Rizzi.
“After reports of an unauthorized horse race, in which dozens of people filmed the event and fired shots into the air, police conducted investigations in several neighborhoods,” the local police force said. “This has led to the Public Prosecution Service indicting two men aged 40 and 45.”
The investigation also revealed that both horses, despite their good physical condition, were not microchipped and were kept in two illegal stables. “The animals and their enclosures were seized,” it said. “The horses have been entrusted to a specialist company that will care for them, preventing further use in illegal racing.”
Mafia families
Illegal horse racing still occurs widely in Sicily, as well as in Calabria and Campania. Previous investigations have shown that such races are often organized by mafia families linked to the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta.
The races generate large sums of black money, with stakes often reaching thousands of euros for a single event. “Illegal racing allows criminal groups to demonstrate their complete dominance over the area by occupying and blocking public roads and deploying men and vehicles. The horses are beaten, kept in unsanitary conditions and administered banned substances,” Italian animal welfare organization Lav said in its 2025 annual report. “Many horses come from the regulated racing industry and are fraudulently reused in street racing.”
The horses are often given names inspired by infamous figures, ranging from mafia bosses such as Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano to mafia turncoat Carmine Schiavone and even Osama bin Laden.
