LAST Saturday a horse named Rislaya was killed during the Winter Cup at Rosehill. The five-year-old mare lost her footing entering the straight, stumbled and fell at high speed, receiving an injury to her near foreleg, reports Michael Lynch in The Age.He says: Jockey Grant Buckley was hurled to the turf but, unlike Rislaya, was unharmed. The mare, who was racing for the last time before being retired to stud, was euthanised on the track. Buckley ambled back to the unsaddling enclosure and was gi

LAST Saturday a horse named Rislaya was killed during the Winter Cup at Rosehill. The five-year-old mare lost her footing entering the straight, stumbled and fell at high speed, receiving an injury to her near foreleg, reports Michael Lynch in The Age.

He says: Jockey Grant Buckley was hurled to the turf but, unlike Rislaya, was unharmed. The mare, who was racing for the last time before being retired to stud, was euthanised on the track. Buckley ambled back to the unsaddling enclosure and was given a round of applause by the crowd, thankful to see at least he had escaped intact. There were no demonstrators demanding the ending of flat racing. Television news has not been full of gruesome shots of the horse coming to grief. There have been no banner headlines calling for a rethink of the way flat races are run, nor has talkback radio been jammed by callers urging an end to the sport.

In fact, one report of the race -- won by the Hawkes family-trained stayer Niwot -- barely mentions Rislaya's demise. She figures only near the end of a 16-paragraph report, accounting only for the last four paragraphs.

It's a marked difference to the way any fatal injury is treated in a jumps race. Any stumble, error or fall is nowadays regarded as an apocalyptic event. A recent hurdle race at Sandown in which three horses failed to finish prompted immediate discussion on whether this sport, now subject to the most rigorous scrutiny, should be banned immediately. Not that this will have surprised jumps-racing adherents who, in the past few years have had to live with the sport's uncertain future hanging over their heads like a sword on a very frail thread.

Yes, jumps racing does carry inherent risk. And no, no one can actually talk to a horse and ask it if it wants to do it. But those in the industry are adamant, and for this writer it is hard not to have a strong measure of sympathy for their view, that the risks for a handful of gallopers far outweigh the benefits enjoyed, particularly for older, slower, stamina-packed horses who otherwise would have little future in an Australian racing industry dominated by breeders, owners and trainers who want to produce speedy, precocious young horses who can be put into training as soon as possible to provide a return on investment.