condoned cruelty... and they re racing

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24542804-21147,00.html

If whip doesn't hurt, why use it?

Patrick Smith | October 24, 2008

THIS is a national scandal. Nothing short of it. Australian thoroughbred horses are whipped daily and consistently and nobody knows why.

It is cruelty on a massive scale and Australians should be ashamed that we have not ordered the barbarism to stop years ago.
Sections of the racing industry maintain the whip does not cause pain to a horse. Pat Hyland, a former wonderful jockey and now a trainer, said on Wednesday: "It doesn't hurt the horse. Horses are tough animals."

Hyland needs to answer this question then: if it doesn't hurt horses, why are they being struck in every race, every day around the nation? What possible point is there in whipping? Just thank God Hyland is not your anaesthetist.

The chief executive of the Australian Racing Board, Andrew Harding, is one of the brightest administrators in the game. Yesterday he would not answer the question whether the ARB considered whipping hurt horses. The reason? Because if he said "yes" there would be a flurry of court action by animal welfare groups. If he said "yes" the barbaric nature of whip riding would be laid bare. And he could not say "no" because that answer is so utterly and obviously wrong and without substance.

Victorian chairman of stewards Terry Bailey told Melbourne sports station SEN on the same day that he did not know whether the whip hurt horses. Presumably, it could well be causing terrible pain yet it is allowed to continue because the highly paid and highly qualified racing vets can't figure out whether lashing a horse's rump and shoulder inflicts pain.

If racing does not know whether it causes suffering then it should not allow the practice to continue until it finds out one way or the other. People who are charged with maintaining the welfare of thoroughbred horses cannot be allowed to be in denial or a permanent state of ignorance.

If Bailey does not know whether the whip hurts the horse then he should have no cause to query jockey Craig Newitt's aggressive, frequent but legal use of the whip. Nor would there be any reason for Bailey and Australia's other leading stewards to put to the Australian Racing Board recommendations - described as ground-breaking by Bailey - that are aimed directly at curtailing whip riding.

When Bailey was in charge of harness racing he drove through rules that significantly limited the number of times and the way in which a driver could hit a horse. Presumably, Bailey did not do this for the welfare of the driver but the horse.

In this column on October 1, we challenged the Australian thoroughbred industry to articulate why whips should not be banned. While we were overwhelmed with readers tabling their disgust at the cruelty of whip riding and that it was an abomination and should be stopped immediately, there was not one response from a punter or industry official who attempted to defend the use of the whip.

We have a fair idea why. The industry knows it is impossible to justify the punishment of horses by whip use. Only the most blinkered suggest that it does not hurt the animals. So the alternative is to agree that the whip hurts horses but that we should consider this appropriate.

The present rules of racing on whip use were informed by a 1991 Senate inquiry. Broadly it was accepted that whips were required to control horses. That has been extrapolated out to the sport allowing jockeys to whip the living daylights out of the animals.

Think back to 1991. In the AFL, racial vilification was commonplace, tolerated as a legitimate tactic to put indigenous players off their game. It was in cricket, too. A bit of biffo was the lifeblood of rugby league and the ability to punch a man senseless or behead him with a high tackle were necessary because these actions defined the sport as different to netball and synchronised swimming. In 1991, it was deemed OK to whip a horse until a large patch of welts appeared on its hide. And still is.

All codes of football remain dangerous games but they have been refined, gratuitous violence outlawed and racial vilification banned. While footballers play a sport that condones physical pain, at least the players make their own decision to participate. Horses have no such voice. They are just flogged.

In 2008, Australians do not want horses whipped. Again we refer to this image: imagine a horse standing in the centre of town with a little man colourfully dressed and holding a whip. He then hits the horse on its rump repeatedly.

Passers-by would soon physically restrain him because that would be deemed a cruel and callous action. Yet the racing industry allows it to happen on race tracks around Australia every day of the year. And it is called sport.
That the racing industry fell out with the community long ago is undeniable. It has discovered the only way to make the sport relevant is to encourage people to get so pissed they can't stand up and women feel un-Australian if they do not bare their breasts. This debauchery goes for four weeks and it is called the spring carnival. For the other 48 weeks of the year racing conducts a sport and industry utterly disconnected from the community within which it operates.

In fact, racing is scared of what the community thinks of it. The stewards' recommendations on reducing the use of the whip will not be made public - at least until the ARB considers them in December. So the board will make decisions in a vacuum, unaware of what the public wants from its administrators, oblivious to what people think of the stewards' ideas.

If the ARB cared for what the community thought about the whip then it would make the recommendations public to encourage healthy debate. The lack of transparency suggests the ARB is fearful of what it might hear. Harding defends the board's timing, saying to let the public know the stewards' recommendations would be to put the cart before the horse. But that is exactly what racing does every day of the year. It puts punting and winning, trifectas and prizemoney, ahead of the welfare of the animals that sustain its business.

There is some hope. Harding said that at its December meeting the board, if it thought whipping caused suffering to the horse, would give that fact the "greatest possible weight". In the year 2008, the racing industry dares tell Australia it does not know whether whipping a horse causes pain.

Here's an idea to clarify the issue. The ARB chairman Bob Pearson should whack every member of the board once with the whip. Then take a vote. We think the "aahhhs" have it