Shane McNally reports on the outcome of a bitter fight at Oakbank in South Australia, which has cast fresh doubts over the future of jumps racing in the country
Jumps racing in Australia has been dealt another significant blow with news that there will be no further cards scheduled in South Australia – one of only two states where jumping has continued following years of protest from a powerful animal-rights lobby.
After months of Supreme Court action, fierce infighting among people who once worked for the same cause and even anonymous death threats, jumps racing finally appears to have come to an end at Oakbank, the home of the Great Eastern Steeplechase, once one of the world's most popular chases attracting crowds of 70,000.
Despite a recent resurgence in Victoria, with the Warrnambool Grand Annual three-day carnival in May attracting record crowds, the once-proud Australian jumps community is a shadow of its former self. Indeed, there are only 66 jumps races programmed for next season – down significantly on a couple of decades ago, and fraction compared to jumping's heartland in Europe.
South Australian racing authorities acted in October 2021 to stop programming jumps races, a move which was supposed to bring to an immediate end to almost 150 years of tradition - but the SA jumps lobby wasn't going down without a fight, particularly while jumps racing was enjoying a renaissance across the border in Victoria.
Now, though, it would appear a bitter fight has been lost.
Victoria is now the only state in Australia to conduct jumps racing. New South Wales ran its last hurdle race in 1941 and legally banned the exercise in 1997, while Tasmania caused a shock to the industry by calling an immediate and unexpected halt to jumps racing in early 2007.
While the jumps races still programmed in Victoria include traditional features such as the A$350,000 ($244,000) Grand Annual Steeplechase at Warrnambool plus the Grand National Hurdle and Steeplechase, the overall numbers paint a picture of an industry desperately trying to cling on to former glories.
Numbers have decreased further since 2019, when official figures showed only 93 jumps races contested by 257 individual horses across Australia. By comparison, the UK conducted 3,719 jumps races that year featuring 8,743 horses and Ireland ran 1424 races for a total of 5025 horses.
The recent South Australian result further threatens those diminishing numbers. The battle started when the Oakbank Racing Club acknowledged the decline in crowds and interest in the wake of five- and six-horse hurdle and steeple races, and accepted the change. The decision was already out of the club's hands but all hell broke loose anyway.
The jumps lobby argued the club had turned its back on a great tradition and the racing people still involved in that part of the industry; the club argued it was not their decision, that fighting it was a futile exercise and that Oakbank was best served going ahead with an all-Flat program. Until the recent decision, Oakbank's two-day Easter carnival of roughly 18 races included two hurdles and two steeplechases.
So the parties spent eight months in court before finally agreeing the best option was to vacate all positions on the Oakbank Racing Club committee and ask the members to decide.
Then, on a frosty winter's night at the Adelaide Hills course on Friday, June 10, a Special General Meeting was held to hear the outcome of the members vote – an overwhelming endorsement of the committee and a rejection of what amounted to a no-confidence move. In other words, the end of SA jumps racing.
The numbers gave the Oakbank committee, which effectively had its hands tied by the governing body, very little hope of arguing the case for a continuation. All eight members who stood for re-election were voted back. Chairperson Arabella Branson continues in her role, while Chris Dittmar, James Jordan, Barney Gask, John Lewis, Stephen Charlton
, Andrew Watson and Trent Shortland will be joined on the committee by Gary Collis as the sole new member. Nine positions were vacated but one former member chose not to stand for re-election.
After reading the results of the vote overseen by independent auditing firm William Buck, meeting chair Tim Anderson QC was in the process of calling proceedings closed when members of the jumps lobby demanded to be heard. Anderson reluctantly acquiesced to hear jumps lobby leader Frances Nelson QC, a former Racing SA chair, question the validity of the vote.
Nelson, who led the challenge with former Oakbank chair John Glatz who also spoke in protest, cast aspersions over the election process and claimed the meeting had “miscarried”.
She said: “Can the auditor or the new committee explain why is it that some members including life members have not received any ballot forms? This meeting has miscarried, members have not been entitled to exercise their democratic right to vote and this will not be the end of it.”
Following her re-election, Branson said the vote was a victory for the club's future. “It’s given us the endorsement that we’re heading in the right direction. Let’s get on with the job of running a successful, viable and modern racing club.”
Branson said the fight for the committee's survival over an issue as not of its own doing was frustrating, claiming the cost of legal action was “hugely detrimental” to the club’s finances.
“It's also been very distressing for committee members, who are just trying to do the be
st thing by the club without being subjected to the vitriol some have experienced,” she said.
“We’ve had legal advisers involved since October last year and on top of that, we’ve had well-publicised audit expenses. The other side agreed that having the auditors undertake the voting procedure would be the most transparent and fair method. The procedure was clearly set out in the settlement documents negotiated by our lawyers and their lawyers and any criticism of wrongdoing is completely false.
“I've found the reaction by people who should know better incredibly disappointing and quite insulting to the highly professional, well-regarded audit firm that conducted the ballot.”
Adding to the controversy, the Warrnambool Racing Club controversially threw its support behind SA jumps racing by emailing its own members encouraging them to join the Oakbank club and help elect a pro-jumps committee – including a promise that membership would roll over for a further year if a pro-jumps committee was elected. This was strongly criticised by the governing bodies in both SA and Victoria.
Racing Victoria said it was “totally inappropriate” for a Victorian race club to lobby members trying to influence the outcome of a South Australian racing club’s board election, while Racing SA described the action as “unconscionable”.
The Oakbank battle has divided racing people in SA and beyond and played into the hands of the anti-racing lobby headed by the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses, whose website is titled horseracingkills.com.
Ultimately seeking to end all horse racing, the Coalition was at Oakbank again this year, even though there were no jumps races. This time they were calling for an end to the use of tongue ties as an allegedly unnecessary and cruel practice.
Now, though argument has raged in racing circles over Oakbank’s own role in the demise of jumps racing, it seems they have claimed another victim.
• Visit the Oakbank page on the CountryRacingSA website
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