Mike Dillon: Let's ban jumping to wrong conclusions

The save-us-from-ourselves, ban-everything brigade are out in force. It must be that time of year.

A weekend newspaper sports columnist, who appears not to like many sports and certainly no rough-and-tumble, had a crack at not so much the "thirst for mayhem, carnage and even death" he saw in the Waikato Hurdles at Te Rapa 10 days ago, but the subsequent media response to it, much of it in this column.

That columnist would clearly like to see jumps racing BANNED.

In this sport "if you can call it a sport" where "animal abuse is happening" horses are "being flogged around a track for hours".

Flogging racehorses went out with lace-up boots.

It was BANNED.

The mayhem and carnage the columnist saw was, in total, one horse collapsing and dying in the early stages of the Waikato Hurdles from a heart attack.

Elephants, domestic dogs, doves, humans and racehorses are all among those who die of heart attacks.

Horses, like humans, have been known to suffer heart attacks in their sleep. That could be fixed by BANNING sleep.

The columnist wants boxing and kick boxing BANNED and he appears a little unhappy with motor racing.

Rugby league copped a caning for what he saw as the feral attitude towards State Of Origin games.

He describes jumps racing as "on-going cruelty and mistreatment".

Horses actually love jumping.

How dare they, they should be BANNED.

You'd wonder why there is any sport at all, really.

I mean, look at the deaths it creates.

Roland Hedberg, Bill Masterton and Mickey Renaud all died playing ice hockey. That is a bit feral, though, isn't it?

NFL claimed the lives of Al Lucas, Gaines Adams, Howard Glenn, Chuck Hughes, Steve Johnson and Korey Stringer.

BAN it, who needs the Superbowl?

Ereck Plancher, Eraste Autin, Chucky Mullins, Aaron O'Neil, Greg O'Neil, Greg Pratt, Jack Trice, Rashidi Wheeler and Curtis Williams all fell playing college football in the United States.

Thank God universities BANNED it and replaced it with knitting classes.

Aussie rules killed Ron Doig. Good luck BANNING that.

Major league baseball claimed Ray Chapman and John McSherry.

Plans to switch Yankee Stadium to a seal park are well advanced.

Boxing and bobsleighing, yeah, they're pretty fast and furious and have claimed 16 and seven lives apiece, but the deaths of Gyorgy Kolonics and Rich Weiss while canoeing came as a surprise to some.

Bullfighting, ah, yes, you can make a definite case to BAN that, although it's surprising only 10 toreadors have perished.

That makes it the bulls 10, the blokes 125,764.

Sailing grabbed 10 humans and the rugged sports of diving, gymnastics and fencing one each.

Then you get into the really dangerous zones - like figure skating that cost Sergei Grinkon his life. What were we thinking when we didn't BAN that?

And, wait for it, chess.

Yes, chess saw grandmaster Vladimir Bagirov leave this world while playing in 2000.

We'd recommend that be BANNED, but we don't know the Russian word for it.

Cricket is the Sunday columnist's game. That sedate, time-honoured pursuit killed Abdul Aziz, Ian Folley, Raman Lamba, Scott Mason and Wilf Slack.

He refers to football - still soccer to many of us - as "the beautiful game".

It reigns supreme in sport as the killer of humans.

In the past 113 years, playing football has killed 76 people, the latest, Wilson Mene, on May 8.

Yes, it seems there's dying everywhere.

You can even die laughing.

In 1984, comedian Eric Morecambe was doing a stage show in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, during which he said he would hate to go the way of fellow comedian Tommy Cooper, who had died on stage earlier that year.

Thirty minutes later during a curtain call, Morecambe suffered a heart attack and died.

He must not have had the save-us-from-ourselves brigade looking after him.