Horse safety campaigner Juliana Waugh has backed calls for a public inquest into the death of Marina Morel, a French-born jockey killed in a training accident at a NSW country racecourse.
The NSW coroner is conducting a preliminary investigation into Morel’s death. Waugh, the mother of a teenage girl killed in a riding accident 14 years ago, said a public inquest was needed to help prevent future fatalities.
“We are not looking to blame someone, we are looking to find out where things went wrong and learn from things that led to the accident,” she said.
Marina Morel was the first jockey to die on a NSW racetrack in almost five years.
“Very often with horses, people just say they are high risk. That is what happened with my daughter. As we began to piece things together we realised there was something wrong. A coronial inquest is a way to find the little mistakes that join up to a catastrophe.”
A coronial inquest into the 2009 death of Sarah Waugh while riding a recently retired racehorse at a Dubbo TAFE led to significant changes to risk assessment, rider education and training within the TAFE system. Juliana Waugh has since become a prominent advocate for safety reforms.
Pressure from Sarah Waugh’s parents, Juliana and Mark, resulted in a public hearing and series of coronial recommendations to prevent future rider deaths.
Morel, a 30-year-old apprentice jockey who rode for trainer Brett Thompson in the Central Tablelands town of Gulgong, was crushed to death when the horse she was galloping in training, Lina’s Choice, sustained a catastrophic injury on 8 February 2022.
An investigation by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that the chief vet of Racing NSW at the time, Toby Koenig, repeatedly raised concerns prior to Morel’s death about a series of horse fatalities connected to Thompson’s stables.
Koenig quit his job shortly after Morel’s death.
A post-mortem examination of Lina’s Choice conducted at the University of Sydney’s school of veterinary science, internal NSW Racing communications and an expert report by Koenig, all obtained by The Age and the Herald, raise questions about whether the mare returned to work too early from a previous injury.
Maria Morel, Marina’s mother, has backed the push for a public inquest so that witnesses can testify and be questioned about the circumstances of her daughter’s death.
Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys denies his organisation could have done more to prevent Morel’s death. “There is simply no basis to assert that the actions of Racing NSW have in any way contributed to the accident that resulted in this tragic death,” he said.
The Age and Herald are not suggesting that V’landys was informed of Koenig’s concerns before Morel’s death.
University of Melbourne Associate Professor Peta Lee Hitchens, the lead epidemiologist on an Equine Limb Injury Prevention Program funded by Racing Victoria, said the best way to protect riders is to better protect their horses from injury.
Data collected from racehorse postmortems conducted in California have shown that in more than 80 per cent of instances, catastrophic horse injuries are accompanied by pre-existing pathology indicating a previous injury or bone stress.
Hitchens said a mind-shift was needed among Australian trainers to see more catastrophic racehorse injuries – and any resultant jockey deaths – as preventable, rather than unavoidable accidents.
“A lot of serious jockey injuries and fatalities are the direct result of riding a horse that has broken down under them,” she said. “If you protect the horse, you protect the rider.
“We have seen here in Victoria, as well as North America, that improving the understanding and awareness of trainers around injury development has led to a decrease in fatalities. The majority of these injuries are not something that happens spontaneously; they have been developing for weeks and even months prior.”
There are conflicting accounts of what caused Lina Choice’s injuries.
A post-mortem examination on the mare revealed that the humerus bone beneath the horse’s left shoulder shattered in multiple places. It also showed extensive bone thickening in the area that fractured – pre-existing pathology indicating a previous injury or stress fractures.
Koenig in his report to the coroner concluded the weakened humerus shattered under the pressure of galloping, which in turn caused the horse to collapse to the turf. Thompson in his submission to the coroner says the horse fell after it clipped its own heels and the impact with the ground caused the fractures.
Thompson declined to comment about his management of Lina’s Choice while the matter was before the coroner. There is no suggestion that his actions, or those of Racing NSW, contributed to Morel’s death.
