Newspaper articles from 1927, nearly 100 years ago, highlight one of the key issues in jumps racing – transparency in reporting in injuries and fatalities, according to CEO of RSPCA Victoria, Dr Liz Walker.
An article titled ‘Steeplechasing Crashes’ from The Herald (Melbourne) in 1927, states that the RSPCA had compiled its own list of accidents from steeplechasing in a bid to have it banned.
“Unfortunately, we are still compiling our own lists of jumps racing accidents and injuries, nearly 100 years later, as they are still not centrally available to the public. Without this information, we are unable to gauge the true extent of the impact of jumps racing on the horses involved, but from the information we have it appears that despite significant efforts to improve the activity over the past decades, there are inherent animal welfare issues that cannot be mitigated,” said Dr Walker.
