Image: Independent Arbiter joins hands with the Greens on greyhound racing. Photo: Nancy W Beach
By TILEAH DOBSON
Another life has been lost at the Wentworth Park racetrack with the death of a young greyhound, and now advocates are raising questions about safety standards on the track.
This latest death has now raised the number of greyhound deaths to 30 in tracks across New South Wales in 2023. The incident occurred on Wednesday 28th June 2023.
The steward’s report states that the greyhound, Swift Kade had collided with other dogs on the track’s first turn and fell. The dog sustained “humeral fracture with articular involvement,” and was soon euthanased by the on-track vet.
This was the dog’s only seventh race.
Questions have been raised on Wentworth Park’s safety standards, despite it receiving half a million dollars for safety upgrades.
In 2019, the park underwent a $552,895 “track and infrastructure project” as part of the previous Liberal government’s Greyhound Capital Grants Program, which sought to make racing safer.
Since the completion of the upgrade, 16 dogs have died and almost 1,000 have sustained injuries on the track.
According to NSW state director for the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds (CPG), Kylie Field, this latest death shows that the park’s “racetrack shows that greyhound racing can’t be made safe.”
“Taxpayers gave more than $500,000 in a failed safety upgrade, resulting in the deaths of 16 dogs,” she said.
“The racing industry has ignored its own research, conducted by the University of Technology Sydney, that the congestion that occurs at track bends often leads to injuries.”
“Swift Kade is the latest young victim of a barbaric industry that doesn’t belong amongst the Sydney community. He’d won $5,880 in his short career, which would have treated his broken leg. By the time Wentworth Park’s lease expires in 2027, another 1,000 dogs might have been killed and injured. It’s heartbreaking.”
Greyhound racing’s controversial history
Greyhound racing continues to be a controversial topic within Australia’s sporting landscape. Back in 2021, it was uncovered in a report that hundred of greyhounds had died across the country in 2020.
The data collected by CPG from analysing data from thousands of official stewards’ reports across the country that there had been 202 deaths. Within NSW alone, there had been 48 deaths and 2,821 injured. The deadliest track was the one in Richmond.
In 2022, the then-Member for Balmain, Jamie Parker had noted that the track in Wentworth Park was taking up valuable spacethat could’ve been used for other public purposes, with “very few people actually even visit the site.”
“At Wentworth Park, we have such huge demand for open green space for recreation and sports, these critical pieces of public space should be used by the public, and not just for activities like greyhound racing,” Parker said.
City Hub reached out to Wentworth Park Greyhounds for comment.
