Like many racing fans, Vicky Leonard has spent the build up to Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup trawling social media.
She wishes it was to watch the Racing Blogger’s tour-de-horse across Victoria, the latest happenings with the overseas-trained Cup aspirants at Werribee or which runners the sharpest form analysts are tipping in the two-mile feature.
Instead, the marketing guru and horse lover behind ‘Kick Up For Racing’ is refreshing her search bar for the latest #NupToTheCup posts from the Animal Justice Party, Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses and any number of Greens politicians that use the heightened interest in racing at this time of year to campaign for its end.
While most passionate racing fans and punters would use a handful of choice four-letter words to tell the anti-racing mob what they think, Leonard uses something much more powerful.
Science, data and facts.
A not-for-profit created in 2021 to advocate on behalf of the industry, Kick Up For Racing assumes a role that racing administrators across the country have neglected for years.
Leonard and her team go into bat for racing’s equine welfare record, using independent studies, veterinary journals and anecdotal evidence to combat the lies peddled on social media.
The activists might see their role as keeping the industry to account but Leonard’s job is equally to ‘keep the bastards honest’ when blatant lies are used to hurt racing.
“It’s always been a major source of frustration that we’ve allowed the industry’s narrative to be dictated by anti-racing people that don’t know and don’t really care what is actually going on,” Leonard said.
“Their goal is to stop horse racing so they’re never going to promote that great stuff that we are doing.”
“The world does need activism and for our industry it is really good that we are held to account but it shouldn’t be done with lies, it should be done with accurate information about what is going on.”
“Previously, if you Googled ‘how many horses die racing’ or ‘why are horses euthanized sometimes when they fracture a leg’ the only results that came up were pages on websites run by the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses or PETA.
“If we (Kick Up For Racing) were going to be calling out the misinformation and inaccuracy out there, we needed to have the right information at our fingertips.”
“We worked with a lot of vets and scientists to pull in as much data as we could.”
“There are some major gaps in what our industry publishes and certainly that needs to be worked on but from what we have been able to ascertain, we’ve been able to disprove a lot of complete misinformation that is perpetuated by the anti-racing brigade.”
“We decided to build a website, make that data publicly available and tackle social media.”
“We launched in 2021 which was good timing because it was when Racing Victoria and the VRC sorted out their Melbourne Cup protocols.”
In recent days alone, Kick Up For Racing has had to clarify on social media that Black Caviar didn’t live a miserable life as a broodmare, remind haters about the strict drug regulations that prevent the use of steroids in racing and reaffirm the industry’s 99.94% safety rate, despite claims to the contrary.
It’s all about providing balance to an emotional argument and arming industry advocates with the information to wage their own battles on social media and in real life.
As much as she’d probably like to, Leonard never talks about how many brumbies are shot from helicopters as part of Government-sanctioned culling or how many domestic cats and dogs are put to sleep by the RSPCA each year.
Kick Up For Racing isn’t going to change the minds of those that are posting the lies.
It’s not designed to.
Leonard is talking to the everyday Australians that will ultimately decide whether the Melbourne Cup, and indeed horse racing more broadly, has a place in society in decades to come.
“You’ve got to remember that the majority of people are silent,” she said.
“They are reading and they are scrolling and might only be there for the comments but might not be commenting themselves so therefore, when we see a post, even if it is by an anti-racing organisation, we need to engage.”
“We’re never going to change the mind of the person that made the original post and we understand that but what we are trying to do is make sure that a balanced conversation is being presented and the accurate facts are there so that people that want to see both sides of the conversation, can do that.”
“The majority of Australians are very reasonable people so we’re not talking to the hard left, we’re talking to the everyday person who actually does want correct information to make up their mind and what position they take.”
“We get around 100,000 visitors to the website during Cup week so that means that there are people seeking the information.”
“Ultimately the number one thing that is working is that no horses are dying in the Melbourne Cup and, bar none, that is the most important variable that we have out there.”
“But what I am really seeing, and maybe KickUp has helped with this, is that the industry now has the confidence to get stuck in themselves.”
“Often, by the time we get tagged in a post to comment or address it, there have already been people with really good replies on behalf of the industry have chimed in.”
“You don’t have to get outraged and, in fact, the more rational and composed you are in your response, the more likely it is that somebody will believe what you’re saying.”
“Advocates for the industry are no longer tolerating the complete lies that we previously were.”
“We need to meet the expectations of the everyday Australian – not the hard left but also not the people that have lived and breathed the industry every day.”
Leonard hopes some of the discussion and spotlight on the industry this week will stimulate attendance at events around the country as part of the inaugural National Thoroughbred Week.
Racecourses, stables and studs in all states will open their doors to the public with the aim of educating and demystifying the thoroughbred industry.
Leonard is keen to see racing fans get behind the concept. She’d love it even more if racing haters do as well.
