Does the harness racing industry care about its horses?
Is animal welfare an important issue to those in positions of authority?
They’re questions which the wider community is entitled to both ask and expect to be answered with honesty and integrity. Harness Racing Australia, as the governing body, is acutely aware of its responsibility to the welfare of standardbreds in this country.
Without horses, there is no harness racing industry.
And without a widespread public acceptance that our animals are treated humanely and with respect, the livelihood of thousands of breeders, trainers drivers and stablehands nation-wide would be jeopardised.
HRA therefore welcomed a report by Dr Peter Knight for the discipline of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Sydney’s Medical School which investigated the impact of two-year-old racing on the long term career of standardbred horses.
The study challenged the belief that a horse’s racing life was likely to be shortened if it started racing at two – the earliest age at which standardbreds are permitted to compete in Australia.
It strived to establish whether a two-year-old pacer or trotter’s level of physical maturity limited its suitability for racing and training and/or made it more susceptible to injury.
Dr Knight undertook a retrospective analysis of all raced foals in New South Wales in the 2000 stud season – 56 percent of which were male and 44 percent of which were female.
He used the average number of days between starts across a horse’s career as an indicator of injury and/or the horse’s ability to cope with training and racing.
It is Dr Knight’s belief that injuries force trainers to remove horses from the racing population and horses experiencing greater stress associated with racing have a longer recovery period (and therefore race less frequently) and are spelled more often.
He found that 43.9 percent of the selected group of horses made their race track debut as two-year-olds while 33.9 percent first raced at age three.
The study showed that the males, and horses which first raced as two-year-olds earned significantly more prize money than females, and horses which commenced racing age three or over.
Dr Knight therefore concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that racing as a two-year-old had any deleterious effect on a standardbred’s career.
HRA was encouraged by the study findings, particularly given that over the past decade there have been major improvements in the design and maintenance of Australian harness racing tracks.
Larger tracks using state-of-the-art design technology (such as those constructed at Melton and Menangle) enable all horses including two-year-olds to perform to their optimum under the lowest possible physical stress levels.
HRA continue to monitor the basis of Dr Knights’ thesis and is pleased to report that year on year per season we see improvement or stabilization in average number of race starts, percentage of winners, numbers of individual starters, average field sizes, prize money returns and percentages of horses racing.
For more information contact
Gary Kairn Operations Manager
03 9227 3003
