[AusRace] They never let up re crops, do they?

[L.B.Loveday]

Rex Jory is well into his 70's and somewhat senile. Does the idiot think Gai
et alia are "physically and psychologically cruel" to their horses?

 


It's time for whips to be banished to the Sulo bin of history, Rex Jory
writes


Rex Jory, The Advertiser

an hour ago

Subscriber only

*  

*	Top SA harness racing driver Dani Hill opposes proposed whip ban
<https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/superracing/top-sa-harness-racing-driv
er-dani-hill-opposes-proposed-whip-ban/news-story/ad3f8023e6ee23eaec1bed4da5
8bd66c> 

WHEN Winx won the Winx Stakes at Randwick nine days ago, jockey Hugh Bowman
sat in the saddle as still as a garden gnome and guided the great horse
across the line. 

No histrionics and barely a flurry with the whip.

Behind Winx most jockeys were whipping their horses in a futile attempt to
catch the champ.

But Winx was too good. No matter how many times a jockey whips a tiring
horse, it won't necessarily go any faster.

It's time the whip was banned from horse racing in Australia. Whips should
be banished to the Sulo bin of history.

The perception, and there's little doubt the reality, of whipping a horse is
that it is physically and psychologically cruel.

Racehorse owners, trainers and jockeys would not use whips if they didn't
hurt or frighten horses and presumably make them run longer, if not faster.

Winx is the greatest asset Australian racing has had, perhaps since Phar Lap
raced in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The mighty mare pulls big crowds to
racetracks whenever she runs, and commands enormous television audiences.

And it is here that racing is doing itself a grave disservice. In
contemporary Australia, it is no longer acceptable to whip horses.

 

A jockey cracks the whip. Picture: Mal Fairclough/AAP

To a casual observer of horse racing, inflicting cruelty, or perceived
cruelty, on a horse is obnoxious.

So, when people with only a passing interest in racing turn on their
televisions to watch Winx - to watch history - they are forced to digest
blatant and legitimised cruelty. Home televisions, with their huge screens
(not to mention the commercial screens in hotels and other venues), pick up
every detail of sporting events including horse racing.

Many people - and on Saturday afternoons this would include children - would
be revolted to see horses being whipped in the final 100m of a race.

Casual viewers, perhaps potential converts to racing, will be repulsed and
sickened by the spectacle.

For racing, desperate to increase on-course crowds, the whip creates an
appalling image, a public relations disaster.

Why can't racing authorities recognise this?

But in the end, the debate is about the horses, not the image of the racing
industry. The industry, as you would expect, believes whips don't hurt
horses. It's a scarcely credible position, rather like the cigarette
industry saying smoking doesn't damage your health. If we accept, for the
moment, that whipping does not hurt horses, why have them?

There's an argument that whips add to the pageantry and tradition of racing.

Okay, carry whips but make them from sponge rubber.

In 1991 a Senate committee inquiring into Animal Welfare said it "cannot
condone the use of the whip to inflict pain on a horse for no other purpose
than to make the horse run faster in what is essentially a sporting event.

"Competent riding of a horse using only hands and heels to urge the horse on
should provide just as an exciting race and may encourage more emphasis on
improving horsemanship. The Committee would like to see the use of whips as
a means of making a horse run faster eliminated from horse racing."



Horses are fun, joyful creatures - and don't deserve whips

No state government or racing body in Australia took up the Senate's
recommendation.

The RSPCA website says: "The whipping of race horses is our most public form
of violence towards animals. If horses were whipped in the same way, away
from the track, it would be a prosecutable animal cruelty offence."

It adds: "2011 research found 98 per cent of horses were being whipped
without it influencing the race outcome."

A decade ago padding was added to whips, jockeys were banned from raising
the whip hand above their shoulder and whips could only be used in the last
100m of a race.

Hey, wait on. If whips don't hurt why pad them? Why limit the swinging arc?

As the Melbourne Spring carnival approaches, with saturation television
coverage, the racing industry is facing a potential public relations
nightmare.

The simple solution: ban whips from horse racing.

 

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