Why jumps racing should be banned immediately

Find articles by Erica K. Chris W. Find articles by Chris W. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Received Apr 30; Accepted May Abstract Simple Summary The acceptability of jumps racing has been debated in the media due to the high risk of horse fatality.

Abstract Jumps racing involves a higher risk of accident and fatality than flat racing. Keywords: thoroughbred, racing, jumps racing, welfare, media framing, print and social media, public debate, social license. Introduction Jumps racing is a form of thoroughbred horse racing that includes hurdling and steeplechasing.

Results 3. Horse Racing Casualties There were jumps races during the — jumps racing seasons. Open in a separate window. Figure 1. Table 1 Arguments from 10 articles supportive of New Zealand jumps racing published between May —August The five-year-old gelding had to be euthanised. Table 2 Arguments from eight articles opposed to New Zealand jumps racing published between May —August Table 3 Attributes of protagonists in 10 articles supportive of New Zealand jumps racing published between May —August But many perceptions are either exaggerated or simply untrue.

Table 4 Attributes of protagonists in eight articles opposed to New Zealand jumps racing published between May —August Inherent Risk Proponents of jumps racing were fatalistic about the widely accepted risks of jumps racing. Solutions to Reduce Horse Fatalities Through the acceptance of the inherent risk within the sport, the solutions to minimising fatal accidents within the industry were cast as an animal welfare issue.

Attributes of Supporters, Opposition and Horses Involved in Jumps Racing Those involved in jumps racing were represented as inevitably bound to the fate of their horses. Opposition to Jumps Racing Arguments The opposition to jumps racing argument also began with the view that jumps racing was inherently risky and as such, fatal accidents were inevitable.

Inherent Risk The risks inherent to jumps racing were deemed obvious and clear to the audience by jumps racing opponents. Solutions to Reduce Horse Fatalities The personification of the horse and comparison with human attributes led to the issue becoming one of animal rights.

Attributes of Supporters, Opposition and Horses Opponents of jumps racing set themselves up as a forward-thinking minority—fighting for a higher moral good against the exploitative racing industry and their supporters. Article Analysis How jumps racing events were depicted in the media was significant given that most readers were unlikely to have been eyewitnesses to events. Conclusions Jumps racing generally elicited little interest from the mainstream New Zealand media.

Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the support of New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing Inc, the governing body for horse racing in New Zealand for data provision. Author Contributions Conceptualisation, C. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References 1. McManus P. The Global Horseracing Industry. Social, Economic, Environmental and Ethical Perspectives.

Routledge; London, UK: Bolwell C. Descriptive statistics and the pattern of horse racing in New Zealand. Thoroughbred racing. Animal Prod. Hitchens P. The incidence of race-day jockey falls in Australia, — Williams R. Racehorse injuries, clinical problems and fatalities recorded on British racecourses from flat racing and National Hunt racing during , and Equine Vet. Boden L. Risk of fatality and causes of death of Thoroughbred horses associated with racing in Victoria, Australia: — Georgopoulos S.

Risk factors associated with fatal injuries in Thoroughbred racehorses competing in flat racing in the United States and Canada. Rosanowski S. McKee S. An update on racing fatalities in the UK. Ruse K. British Horseracing Authority; [ accessed on 15 May ]. Making Horseracing Safer. Toward new understandings of human—animal relationships in sport: A study of Australian jumps racing.

Graham R. Owens R. Equestrian sport and the concept of a social license. The Guardian. The Guardian; [ accessed on 15 May ].

Crawford L. Fahy B. Idealog; [ accessed on 20 February ]. Billig M. Ideology and Opinions: Studies in Rhetorical Psychology. Sage; London, UK: Winton S. Rhetorical Analysis in Critical Policy Research. Walters L. Williams A. Revamped Racecourse to Reopen. Herald N. Ryan T. Kermeen M. Weighty Issue in Winter Manawatu Standard. Singh A. Buckleton O. Kyle S. Will Industry Bow to Public Perception. Hill B.

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Food Syst. Howe D. A reduction in the on-track death rate by half to 0. Learn more about jumps racing history. Share on Facebook Share. Share on Twitter Tweet. Send email Mail. Print Print. Latest From Twitter "I love jumps racing and the reason I love it — it gives the horse an afterlife. Join Our Mailing List Sign-up to our mailing list to keep up to date. It exposes these animals to a much higher risk of musculoskeletal injuries, physiological stress, other injuries and death when compared to flats racing.

Some people usually those who profit from jumps racing would like us to believe that horses love to jump. Again, this is incorrect. Horses are intelligent animals with a high level of perception of their environment.

If you watch a show-jumping or eventing competition, you will see riders deliberately slow their horses as they approach an obstacle. This helps the horse to steady itself, to judge the height and to jump cleanly. Although there are still risks involved in these equestrian sports, they are far less than those experienced by a racehorse being forced by a whip-yielding jockey at flat gallop alongside other horses over obstacles.

Survival instincts mean that horses are unlikely to jump over obstacles at full speed and risk injury or death. Most horses that lose their riders during jumps races which happens frequently choose to run around hurdles and steeples where they can rather than to continue jumping. Compared to flat races, jumps races have a higher rate of horses failing to finish.

Horses that do finish often struggle many tens of lengths after the winner and are never in contention. The two longest horse races in Australia are jumps races. They are more than three times the length of an average flat race, which is metres.

Horses competing in this race must clear 33 obstacles, more than any other steeplechase in the world. Twelve horses died in jumps races at the Warrnambool track in the eight years from to and many more have been injured.

This feature race of the Oakbank Easter Racing Carnival is metres long. Horses must clear a total of 24 obstacles. The physical toll these races take on the horses is plain to see. Throughout all of this, the horse's heart is beating at nearly bpm, or almost five times per second, circulating a huge volume of blood around the horse's body. Mixed into this blood is a potent chemical cocktail of cortisol, adrenalin, endorphins, and other substances.

When the volume of "feel bad" chemicals, such as cortisol and lactic acid, reaches a certain level in excess of 4mmol per litre of blood, if you want me to be specific then there is a certain mounting sensation of unpleasantness which can even be translated to pain. Once this reaches a critical threshold that unpleasantness is at its maximum, a phenomenon that human athletes call "hitting the wall".

In response to this, the body responds by pumping out significantly more "feel good" chemicals, since by this time the brain has finally become convinced that the animal is in survival mode. When the volume of happy juice in the blood stream exceeds the volume of the unpleasant stuff, the horse will experience the phenomenon that is known as a "runner's high".

This is the second phase of reward for the horse, a temporary release from the pressure of physical pain and exhaustion, combined with a pleasurable sensation that many human athletes have likened to the experience of orgasm I can think of more pleasant ways to achieve this feeling than by running for ten miles, but "to each his own". The effect is only temporary however, and as it wears off the horse is still aware of the vigorous urging of the rider on its back.

This constant stream of communication also amounts to a form of pressure, much in the same way as if your boss keeps coming up to you every five minutes to ask if the Dobson Report is ready yet. Horses are not great at logical reasoning. No horse has yet graduated from a bona fide University, a feat that even Kermit The Frog has achieved.

There are important evolutionary reasons for why the horse has developed these traits, but I won't go into detail on these reasons here again, you are welcome to contact me for more information.

The important thing to know is that the horse is able to recollect how it felt at some particular moment and where it happened. So, for example, if a horse gets injured while being loaded into a starting gate, it will be much more difficult to load the horse in the future because the horse has associated the painful injury with the gate. The third and final reward phase for the horse at the end of a race is when the pressure from the jockey is released. This occurs at the moment the horse passes the winning post or just a fraction of a second afterwards.

This creates a desire in the horse to reach that object or place more quickly, in order to receive the reward more quickly. Anyone who has ever sat on the back of a steeplechase horse can tell you that the horses really seem to enjoy jumping. Now, I can't say that I can see anything particularly fun about the activity itself but who knows? Each time that a horse approaches a jump, the jockey increases the pressure slightly via the bit and his own body posture to help set the horse up for the jump.

Then as the jump is executed, the jockey removes all pressure completely , striving to allow the horse to complete the jump as freely and comfortably as possible. It is only once the horse has landed and begins to gallop off again that restraining pressure is reapplied. Contrary to popular opinion, jumps races are also much less physically stressful for the horse. Studies have shown that horses are much more likely to suffer internal bleeding attacks during flat races than during jumping races, and amongst endurance horses such attacks are virtually unheard of.

It is not the distance or the physical exertion of a race that does the damage, but the high speed. Sprinters, in consequence, are more likely to sustain such damage than stayers. More horses die competing in flat races than in jumping races, but this is simply because there are vastly more flat races.

In terms of per-capita deaths, jumps racing is clearly the more dangerous sport, but this should not surprise anyone. Obviously any sport that involves clearing obstacles is going to be significantly more dangerous than a sport that just involves running around.

Human athletes who compete in track hurdle races probably suffer more injuries than their flat racing counterparts, too. But just because there is greater potential for danger in the sport does not mean by itself that the sport should be banned.

Firstly, of course, there is the fact that as I have shown above, even though horses would not be present at the racecourse without human involvement, most of them do not compete unwillingly. Running, jumping and even racing are natural activities for a horse and horses enjoy them. Even the "rough and tumble" of the horses bumping against each other during the running does not normally cause any great mental distress to the horse because it is no more than they would experience running in a herd of wild horses on the move.

Horses can and do willingly complete races in the absence of any form of coercion on the part of a human rider. We can therefore discount the idea that horses are being made to race against their will even in those cases where it could be true that they are being made to race unwillingly, they will perform so poorly that it will artificially shorten their racing career anyway. Furthermore, however many deaths may result from competition in jumping races, it stands as a fact that only a minority of those who compete will sustain a serious injury.

The number of horses that die in jumping races are less than one percent of those who compete statistics from one racing district put the number at about one fatality for every starters. While this is an unfortunate statistic, compare it with the alternative. If there were no jumping races then the mortality rate for these horses would be very close to percent.

There are far more horses bred each year than the industry can sustain. Since there are not enough people with the money, facilities or inclination to take these horses in, many of them end up getting sold for meat. I know it will bother some people when I say this, but I think it is unfortunate that any animals are killed for meat. But the idea of killing horses in this way seems particularly barbaric. It is not so much the killing itself that is the issue, but the inhumane treatment that animals receive at the hands of those who are employed in the industry.