Mike Dillon: Hulls has trouble and strife

Victorian Racing Minister Rob Hulls has his head in a vice.

On one side of the vice, he's got the multi-million-dollar Victorian jumping industry.

On the other side is his wife.

Hulls has put his finger on the trigger of the gun he's had at the head of the jumping game since last year, when jumping saw 12 horse fatalities in Melbourne.

Prominent identities are asking if some of that trigger pressure is being applied by Hulls' wife, barrister Carolyn Burnside, a member of the Victorian Bar's animal welfare panel.

Lawyers for the panel provide reduced costs services to those involved in animal welfare litigation and also appear in defence of animal welfare protesters, such as those who appeared last week at Warrnambool's three-day May jumping festival.

Hulls was at Warrnambool and immediately suspended jumps racing in Victoria after the deaths of three jumpers.

Even before Warrnambool, Hulls issued the warning on Melbourne's Sport 927 radio early in the week: "The death of a horse is not an acceptable byproduct of jumps racing.

"If we continue to have the number of falls and injuries you've got to ask whether jumps racing is sustainable."

No one asked how many was too many?

You wouldn't want to be betting on the future of jumps racing in Melbourne.

The stakes are high for some.

"Eric Musgrove will be out of business," said astute New Plymouth trainer John Wheeler, who has a Melbourne satellite stable with a high jumping content.

Musgrove, a Gallery Of Champions trainer, has only jumpers and has been the leading jumps trainer for the past seven years.

In 2005, 2006 and 2007, he won the world's richest jumps race, the Nakayama Grand Jump in Tokyo, with Karasi.

Another jumps-only trainer David Londregan said if jumping was banned he would shoot all his horses and send a few heads to the Victorian Racing Minister.

Hulls said Londregan had been watching too many mafia movies.

Australian Jumps Racing Association president Rodney Rae, one of those questioning the possible pressure from Rob Hulls' wife, accused Hull of a vendetta and promised a "massive class action" if the ban went ahead.

Jumps jockeys realise sudden action needs to be taken if the ban is to be avoided and were looking to last night vote on banning hurdles racing and having steeplechase-only jumps.

That's a fair compromise.

The three fatalities this year, before Warrnambool, were all in hurdle races and that was no surprise.

Victoria's hurdles are ridiculously small, tempting horses and jockeys to take them too fast.

When horses get it wrong they trip, rather than fall, and the result is ugly and dangerous.

The fences are small because of the pressure applied a few years ago by animal activists.

When they called for smaller hurdles, the activists didn't realise they were creating a more dangerous problem.

They should have been ignored then as they should be ignored now.

Fix the problem by introducing bigger fences.

That's the reason New Zealand doesn't have fatalities like Australia.