Concerns about jumps racing

RSPCA Victoria has many concerns about jumps racing and why it should end in Victoria. Jumps racing (hurdles or steeplechase) forces horses to jump over obstacles, carrying heavier loads than their flats racing counterparts, and increasing the risk of collision with other horses. Victoria is now the last place in Australia where jumps racing takes place.

Animal welfare concerns

Animal welfare is our primary concern regarding jumps racing.

Over the last few decades, despite work to implement safety measures by the industry, the fatality, fall and injury rates have not differed from the long-term trends:

  • The average fatality rate for jumps races over the last twenty years is 6.9 fatalities/1000 horse starts. In 2025, the fatality rate was 6.6/1000 starts.*
  • The fall rate oscillates from its lowest point in 2006, at 22.5 horse falls per 1000 starts, to its highest in 2018 at 61.2 falls/1000 starts. In 2025, the fall rate was 26.2 falls/1000 starts.*
  • The average injury rate in the last decade (excluding years 2020 and 2021 which have no publicly available data), is 69.3 injuries per 1000 starts. In 2025, the injury rate was 80.8/1000 starts.*

Find out more about these welfare risks on our knowledgebase: What are the animal welfare issues associated with horse jumps racing?

*Source: https://rspcavic.org/what-we-do/advocacy/jumps-racing/audit/

Industry transparency concerns

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

When this audit was conducted, only 35% of complete Jumps Review Panel racing reports are publicly available from Racing Victoria since safety interventions began 14 years ago. RSPCA Victoria’s audit revealed these reports:

  • required time-consuming manual tabulation by external parties to paint a complete picture of jumps racing,
  • contained 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

These reports have now been removed from Racing Victoria’s website and are no longer publicly available. This means that the only  publicly available information on jumps racing safety and welfare in the industry is a single race fatality statistic printed in Racing Victoria’s annual report.

No information on the financial or participatory status of jumps racing is available from the last 15 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.

Jumps racing in decline

Victoria is now the last place in Australia where jumps racing takes place with jumps racing making up only 1.6% of all thoroughbred racing in the state.

Following the 2024 jumps racing review, Racing Victoria has further withdrawn support for this niche sector of the racing industry, reducing prizemoney by $1 million and minimising the jumps racing calendar by 20%.

Even in regional areas the proportion of jumps racing is small, and in 2025 there were only 3 race meets where only jumps races were held. Every other jumps race meet also held flats races, and often held more flats races than jumps. See our submission to the Racing Victoria review to find out about the 2024 season.

  • These numbers don’t lie, and they can’t be used to justify continuing jumps racing given the inherent animal welfare issues.

Lack of community support

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.

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