Pope speaks

On July 6, 2002, the Winning Post published my letter "Why I’II keep protesting". In it I outlined our arguments for the abolition of jumps racing, comparing it to other animal-use activities that had been abolished.

I ended by saying: "The anti-jumps race campaign will proceed." It has, and in the intervening seven years dozens of horses have been killed and the public shocked by the images they’ve seen.

Having said this, there was nothing unusual about the deaths. They were a normal part of normal jumps racing seasons. The difference is that now they were in full public view rather than getting a line or two on page 95 of the newspaper or, more usually, not mentioned at all.

On TV and in the general readership sections of the newspaper the images provided brand-damaging reality to racing’s self-promotion as an industry that "loved horses". In poll after poll the public voted against the continuation of jumps racing by large percentages.

For this and other, mainly economic, reasons the board of Racing Victoria decided to end this branch of its business at the conclusion of the 2010 season. Unsurprisingly pro-jumps lobbyists have fought back and Racing Victoria Ltd has been pilloried by jumps racing aficionados demanding a reversal. However, the arguments they’ve tabled to support their case appear to be not much more than a recycled wish list of failed ideas.

The president of the Australian Jumps Racing Association, Rodney Rae, has called the executive board of Racing Victoria mindless, incompetent and incapable of organising "a piss-up at a brewery" while Marg Lucas, president of the Warrnambool Racing Club, said the board was "pathetic and gutless".

Perhaps this is why businessman Mike Symons has been chosen to rebuild a bridge between jumps racing fanciers and the board. Symons says his first involvement with the jumps issue was a fortnight ago when he thought that Racing Victoria’s data on jumps racing falls were flawed and that there had been a safety improvement in the second half of the season. Unfortunately this is normal statistical variation. In jumps racing it is possible to have a number of races without a fall or death and then have five falls and three deaths in a single race.

The proposal by sections of the racing community to hold steeplechases in place of hurdle races in an effort to reduce falls and deaths is based on a false premise.

The reason falls are reduced in steeplechases are that there are proportionally fewer steeplechase races. Let’s have a quick look at this year alone.

There were 34 steeple and 46 hurdle races this year. That’s 42 percent steeples. Two of the eight fatalities were in steeples, ie 25 percent. There were 33 falls this year (falls and brought down), of which 16 (49 percent) were in steeplechases.

Put another way, based on 2009 figures a horse will die in 13 percent of hurdle races and six percent of steeplechases. However, a horse will fall in 37 percent of hurdle races and 47 percent of steeplechases. Who is fatally injured from a fall is a highly uncertain affair.

What about the tracks? It is proposed that some tracks are safer than others. This year Warrnambool had four fatalities, Moonee Valley two, Sale and Yarra Valley one each. The figures don’t include two known trialling deaths. There may have been more.

This suggests Warrnambool, which staged 24 percent of the jumping races, and Moonee Valley (five percent) are are the most dangerous tracks. But really, tracks and stats are moot. The physics of racing and jumping a horse at the same time means that it will always be a deadly and excessive killer of racehorses.

Another argument put forward is that the new style of jumps is in some way to blame for the spate of deaths in 2009. However, the campaign against jumps racing began because of the death rate over traditional jumps. When the new "super-safe" jumps were introduced, the racing industry promised a "100-percent improvement", with Rodney Rae and top trainer Eric Musgrove attesting to their superiority. The old jumps were deadly. The new jumps are deadly. All jumps are deadly.

Finally, it is suggested that racing shouldn’t pander to animal advocates variously described as hippies, politically correct and the loony left with "soft values".

It’s hard to know what is actually meant by this name-calling but it should remembered that Victoria’s Cain Labor government promised to phase out jumps racing in 1982; five reviews have failed to achieve anywhere near acceptable workplace-safety outcomes and the economics of jumps racing are abysmal.

Speaking of safety, in 1868 Chambers Encyclopaedia says of jumps racing: "Great crowds of people attend, the very danger of the sport seeming to increase its attractiveness. Serious accidents are not infrequent …"

The "slippery slope" argument, a la John Wheeler: "Soon it’ll be rodeos, three-day eventing and show jumping (19/12)," is fanciful.

Rodeos have been protested for 20 years, John – and yes, I hope the protesters win. Eventing has made horse safety a much higher priority than in the past and, as for show jumping, well, I know animal activists who are show jumpers, so probably not.

The trajectory of history cannot be simply ignored as the ravings of hippies.

Racing Victoria should maintain its current course because the facts have not changed. Reform always brings resistance. The younger and more progressive members of the industry will already have adjusted their sights. Many of the older ones never will.