Racing: Laing wants jumps review

MELBOURNE - Top Victorian jumps horseman Robbie Laing said jumps racing had been compromised out of existence and called for the old panel jumps to be reintroduced.

"Every compromise has made jumps racing so unsafe," Laing said.

"Smaller jumps, fewer jumps, yellow-topped tops, a steel A-frame behind the jumps and schooling over 2800m at a snail's pace with three runners instead of seven or eight running at race speed have all definitely made it less safe."

He said all the changes had led to, in many cases, the wrong type of horse contesting jumps races.

"People go away and get a lightly-framed flat horse that has 2000m flat ability to cater for the low hurdles but at the end of the day it doesn't carry 69kg or 70kg all that well because of its frame," Laing said.

"They are going so damn fast, he trips over the steel A-frame and because he is lightly framed he breaks down."

He said the old-style jumping horses were bigger and stronger.

"He was 17 hands and with a head like a 44-gallon drum and feet like a draught horse and those kinds of horses could really jump," Laing said

He said they would make up to a length at every jump over the former handy flat horse which would equate to 12 lengths at the end of a race.

"They carried weight better and were so big and tough that if they happened to fall they didn't break down."

He said panel jumps were safer as they would flatten if a horse hit them with any force.

"An eight-foot panel of four-by-two with some nice rubber over it and some swamp ti-tree attached to it makes it look nice and natural and if a horse hits it pretty hard the jump falls to the ground," he said. "If a horse got killed it was a rarity and you would be stunned by it.

"But now you go to the races and it is more like 'I wonder which ones are going to come home'."

Laing is confident jumps racing can survive with minimal casualties but only if RVL gets the right advice from past and present jockeys as well as trainers. "If it gets a reprieve let's do it right."

Warrnambool trainer Ciaron Maher is considering a permanent move to Adelaide in South Australia (SA) after the next season, while several jumps jockeys would also relocate.

Thoroughbred Racing SA chairman Phillip Bentley said it would be difficult for the South Australian industry to go it alone but he was adamant the sport would continue in SA if the jumps industry supported it.

Bentley said the TRSA board would meet to discuss options for the future of jumps racing in SA, including Oakbank, which regularly attracts over 100,000 spectators to its two-day meeting at Easter.

- AAP