Concerns about jumps racing

In 2024 RSPCA Victoria conducted an audit of publicly available jumps racing data and found no data for 2010, 2011, 2020, and 2021.

Only 35% of complete Jumps Review Panel racing reports are publicly available from Racing Victoria since safety interventions began 14 years ago, however these reports:

• require time-consuming manual tabulation by external parties to paint a complete picture of jumps racing,
• contain tracked changes and some missing information indicating they may not have been finalised or adequately reviewed prior to being made publicly available, and are not independently audited for accuracy

No information on the financial or participatory status of jumps racing is available from the last 14 years:

• Financial information for jumps racing is reported within the total figures for horse racing, rather than separated out by racing type.
• This muddying of information also occurs for participatory data e.g. jumps racing dependent jobs are not reported separately to other racing industry jobs.
• The Racing Victoria Limited 2009 Jumps Racing Review is the most recent information available, noted all key financial and participatory statistics for jumps racing were in decline, with “many in significant decline”.

Furthermore, the Racing Australia Fact Book stated jumps racing makes up only 1.66% of all thoroughbred racing in Victoria.

Victoria is now the last place in Australia where jumps racing takes place with jumps racing making up only 1.66% of all thoroughbred racing in the state. Even in regional areas the proportion of jumps racing is small.

• Jumps racing made up only 16% of all thoroughbred races in Warrnambool, this figure dropped to 3.4% in Ballarat and as low as 2.2% in Sale.
• There were only three exclusive jumps race meets in 2024 (Pakenham: 2, Ballarat: 1), with the overall proportion of jumps to flat racing in Pakenham still only 4.2%.

These numbers don’t lie and they can’t be used to justify continuing jumps racing.

Community support for jumps racing has been eroding for more than a decade.

In 2009 Racing Victoria’s own review of jumps racing stated: “Customer research data shows 65% of people believe that the incidents that occur in Jumps racing are not an acceptable price to pay for the retention of the sport.”

When announcing the ban in South Australia, the Premier’s office advised jumps racing had “fallen out of favour with the public who find the number of falls and deaths unacceptable.”

South Australia banned jumps races from 2022, with Oakbank Easter Racing Carnival – considered a key jumps racing event – replacing jumps races with flats races.

Crowd attendance at the event in 2021, prior to jumps being banned, was just under 10,000, however in 2023, following the ban, crowd figures were around 10,200  indicating no impact to attendee numbers.

The social licence for jumps racing to continue in Victoria has well and truly run out.