Jump racing kills: Should horses risk their lives for our entertainment?

The scene that greets a visitor to Lawney Hill’s gallops is one that might make a poet weep. They are in the middle of an area of outstanding natural beauty that well deserves the designation. As we watch Laurium, a horse that showed real potential while at Nicky Henderson’s powerful yard, trace a meandering path back to his stable against a backdrop of Oxfordshire wooded hills, the blood and thunder of the fierce debate over the ethics of jump racing seems a million miles away.

But it is because of the debate that I’m here. It starts to heat up every year as the flat racing season tails off and the jumps take centre stage. All it will take to bring it to boiling point is the erection of the dreaded green screens around a high-profile horse after a fall during a major race at Cheltenham, or Sandown Park, or Aintree, or any of the other big jumps tracks.

Dene Stansall, horse racing consultant for Animal Aid, will start getting calls from the media if, or more likely when, this happens. In the meantime, he plays a major role in keeping the pot simmering. A former punter who speaks with the passion of a preacher, he has been at the centre of a highly effective campaign that has kept the spotlight on issues of equine welfare and the debatable ethics of allowing horses to risk their lives for our entertainment.