EQUINE WELFARE
A HELPING HAND BY MICHAEL LYNCH
Racing Victoria’s valuable acknowledged retrainers work tirelessly to transition retired racehorses into new careers. To enable an increase in the number of horses retrained each year, RV has recently introduced funding designed to ensure retrainers can continue to take on, care for and retrain the maximum number of off the track thoroughbreds. Racing Victoria (RV) has worked hard in recent years to boost its Off The Track Program (OTT) to ensure that the maximum number of former racehorses are retrained, rehomed and repurposed in the best possible environment as soon as their racing days are over. The sport’s social license depends on its integrity, and welfare is a key part of that integrity, as RV board member Kate Joel explains. She has had more than a half century of riding and caring for thoroughbreds and ex-racers, from her days as a youngster in Western Australia when she rode trackwork before going to school, to competitive times in the world of eventing and show jumping where she used retrained racehorses. Now, she is chair of RV’s Integrity Council and it is a job that is close to her heart. As such, she is closely involved in RV’s Retrainer Capacity Expansion Grant Program, a $200,000 funding package that allows RV Acknowledged Retrainers to apply for financial support to expand their premises, improve their facilities or to grow their team. The whole idea, as Kate and Emily Aitkenhead, RV’s Racehorse Transition Coordinator point out, is for the state’s retraining infrastructure to be improved so that more horses than ever can be professionally prepared for other roles in the equestrian world. “This program is about providing our acknowledged retrainers, those whom we have already approved, with support to give them the time they need to work with these horses to make them suitable for pony club or eventing or another discipline.
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