Call For Calm After National Carnage

The Age

Monday June 30, 2008

By Tony Bourke

THE head of the Australian jumps association has called for calm following the carnage of the Grand National Hurdle at Flemington on Saturday, when only four of the 13 starters finished, two horses died and several jockeys were lucky to escape serious injury.

Rodney Rae, chief executive of the Australian Jumps Racing Association, will discuss the recent spate of falls and injuries at a committee meeting today.

He said circumstances on Saturday should be looked at in isolation rather than being symptomatic of jumps racing as a whole. "No one likes to see what happened (on Saturday). The primary interest of everyone involved in jumps racing are the horses, but we should take a big, deep breath before making any rash decisions," Rae said.

"It was unfortunate and unacceptable but the facts were that two horses fell and brought three horses down, one broke down on the flat and the others were pulled out of the race by their jockeys.

"One of the horses that fell (Charted) had to be euthanised, as was the horse (Eveready) who broke down."

He said there had been worse days in jumps racing with more fatalities but the current climate was more sensitive because of recent events.

At the bidding of the Racing Minister Rob Hulls, Racing Victoria Ltd will bring forward its annual review of jumps racing after the debacle. Hulls said yesterday, after speaking to RVL chairman Michael Duffy, that he expected to have the review "within a month".

Hulls said horse deaths and injuries to jockeys should not be regarded as a "natural byproduct of jumps racing" because people would start to lose confidence in jumps racing generally.

The RVL board will have jumps racing on the agenda at its monthly meeting on Thursday.

Rae said his organisation was willing to work with the minister and RVL on any review of jumps racing.

He said he did not necessarily subscribe to the theory that the smaller modular hurdles and steeplechase fences introduced a few years ago had made jumps races more dangerous because horses were going faster and did not have to jump as cleanly as they did with the old-style obstacles.

Although Rae said that while speed might not be the main factor, the statistics relating to steeplechases, with the bigger fences, were better than for hurdle races.

"The truth is that since 2005, there has been significant improvement with falls and fatalities but in the last couple of months, the statistics have been disappointing. Now, whether there are specific reasons for this, such as firm tracks or jockeys riding too tightly, is something we have to sit down and work out," he said.

Rae said it was "absolutely disgraceful" that the track was rated a good three for the Grand National Hurdle and added that ". . . We will be taking it up with the VRC because we don't want a repeat of that next Saturday (for the Grand National Steeplechase)".

Adrian Garraway, who fell with Pasco in the National, received a bruised arm.

© 2008 The Age

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