October
MayAction and reaction
Winning Post must be commended for giving space to divergent opinions on jumps racing and I found Mr Lawrence Pope’s letter (7/5) particularly interesting….albeit that I find myself in disagreement.
It is nonsense to use data suggesting that a certain percentage of the population at large is "against" jumps racing in isolation. In fact there is no doubt that this data could be examined further and reveal that a vast majority of the respondents to the various surveys are either against, or not interested in, thoroughbred racing overall. They are merely reacting to the determined efforts of Victoria’s major tabloid newspaper, one of the major racing writers thereof, and some others in the media, to use every fall, every mishap and every photograph that can be interpreted as somehow detrimental, as a reason to denigrate jumps racing and to influence general public opinion.
Of course, as Mr Pope writes, there are some thoroughbred industry people who are not supportive of jumps racing. However he answers that point in his own words by pointing out that it is a segment of the industry that attracts less than one percent of wagering turnover … in other words he concedes that money is the motive for that opposition, not anything to do with the wellbeing of horses. Damn the spectacle; damn giving the horses a chance to do something they clearly love doing; damn tradition … just turn it all into a bland, repetitive means of circulating money; then when the horse turns out to be a bit slower than the others send him to the knackery.
People within the industry with such robotic, profit-driven thinking are equally as one-dimensional as Mr Pope’s placard wavers.
Certainly the racing industry in all of its forms must continue to strive to reduce death and injury to horses, but it is fair to say that improving both the design of the actual jumps themselves, and more stringent stewardship and training generally resulted in improvements in the jumps sector. May these improvements continue and multiply.
The comparison that Mr Pope makes between jumps racing and the obnoxious, medieval Taliban is hardly worthy of comment. Perhaps a more poignant comparison can be made with the carnage one can see on our highways every night whereby hundreds of our native wildlife are maimed and left in agony for hours by self-serving and uncaring drivers who smash them down. I have yet to see any of Mr Pope’s placard wavers (or representatives of the aforementioned tabloid) out there demanding that driving at night be banned.
No doubt my small contribution will be swamped in the Winning Post by anti-jumps letter writers seeking to capitalise on the fact that a competitor in the Grand Annual Steeplechase leapt into a group of spectators. I, of course, trust that those so "aggrieved" by this incident have the fairness of mind to include copies of the equally indignant letters they wrote when a horse (a participant in a flat race) in Sydney jumped into the crowd last October.
Monegeetta (Vic)