GO JUMP!

How’s this for twisted logic ? It comes in the midst of the debate over the future of jumps racing in Victoria --  following the double fatality during the Grand National Hurdle at Flemington on Saturday in which only four of the 13 horses managed to finish. Brian Meldrum, who is a committee man of the Australian Jumping Racing Association, and a former Herald Sun Racing Editor, says that a bam on the hurdles would actually kill horses.

He says in that newspaper ‘To ban jumping races would be to condemn large numbers of horses to a premature end’.  The headline puts it more bluntly:  Jumps Ban Brings Early Death to Horses.

On that basis I guess we should start campaigning for the legalisation of cock fighting. Think how many old roosters are being put down because they can’t get a second career in the cock-fighting ring.

And dog fights. Same argument. And bull fights. Think how many old bulls would avoid the knackery – at least for a while – if it were legal to send them out in a ring to be put to the sword by a Toreador.

Meldrum starts his self-serving column by claiming:  One of the most common fallacies in regards to  jumps racing is that the horses are forced to jump. Yet the idea of a horse weighing between 450 kilograms and 500 kilograms can be made to jump an obstacle by a rider weighing, at best, about 70 kilograms, is to defy reality.

That’s about as specious an argument as you can get. I guess Mr. Meldrum will deny all knowledge of a jumps training procedure called rapping.

That’s where a horse, often after a career of racing on the flat, is re-trained as a jumper. One way to do that is to put a wooden rail across the training area and it raps the horse on the shins if it doesn’t clear. The rail keeps getting raised, the horses keeps getting whacked on the tender shinbone and it learns to lift its legs. Sometimes they’re just whacked with a broom stick.

And as for a 70 kilo jockey not being able to control a 450 kilo horse next Mr. Meldrum will be telling us that the  rider is just a passenger and has nothing to do with when a horse heads for the inside or heads for the outside.

Animals advocate Lawrence Pope makes a good point. He says you can jump a horse reasonably safely and you can race a horse reasonably safely but you cannot do both at the same time.

The Minister for Racing, Rob Hulls, has called for an urgent review of jumps racing. Don’t hold your breath that this government will take any drastic action. It’s more than 15 years since a Federal Senate committee recommended jumps racing be banned on the grounds of animal cruelty.

It’s more than 25 years since I used to get weekly reports on the latest death toll from an animal welfare activist.  Those reports started again this week.

Meldrum also, predictably, rolls out the economic argument and the spectre of job losses if jumps racing is banned.  Funny, Tasmania recently scrapped  the hurdles for  business reasons.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008