Prince Vitality is dead because his connections chose to race him in hurdle and steeplechase races.

This unpalatable truth, which was as a result of the seven-year-old gelding's fatal fall at Casterton last Sunday, was another example of how difficult a task the pro-jumps lobby faces in keeping their sport a going concern.

It should be pointed out that trainer Bryce Stanaway is absolutely gutted, and told Sport 927 this morning: "This is like losing part of my family .... it will just about be the finish of us as it's broken our hearts" as he struggled to control his emotions on air. (The full interview can be heard at sport927.com.au).

Yet his public display of gut-wrenching agony underlined the curate's egg that jumps racing has now become. No matter how many good things occur directly or indirectly as a result of the sport taking place, and regardless of how well looked after and loved these animals are in their day-to-day existence, the bottom-line is that the death rate is far too high.

In fairness, what you won't hear from the "anti" brigade is that both Racing Victoria and the jumps racing fraternity jointly acknowledge this, and have agreed that should the new rules, procedures and modifications brought in for 2010 not result in a substantial fall in fatalities and other outcomes and KPI's, then the sport will cease to proceed past this season.

It also needs to - if you'll pardon the pun - stand or fall in its own right, rather than constantly bringing up double negatives such as the "they'll all be off to the knackery if they aren't allowed to jump" debate, which the weekend exposed as a total myth.

During his 81-start career, Prince Vitality earned $195,978 in prizemoney, and had raced in the specialist staying event at Moonee Valley over 3000 metres 15 times, winning once and placing a further five times.

Which gets back to my original premise that he would still be alive if he'd been raced exclusively on the flat, as he would have raced at Moonee Valley last Saturday in the 3000-metre event, instead of going to Casterton to meet his unfortunate demise.

That race was won by four-year-old Black And Bent in comprehensive fashion, and he is currently the most promising hurdler in the state after strong wins in last year's Lachal Hurdle and this year's Galleywood feature at Warrnambool.

But given he has now won his past three metropolitan flat starts, (on May 29, May 19 and also at Moonee Valley under lights on April 1) and collected $80,601 in the process, he's hardly running from the hangman's noose!

The reality is with seven-day-a-week racing being beamed to lounge rooms and hotels throughout the country, seemingly every couple of minutes on TVN and Sky Channel, there's never been more opportunities available for slow horses to race against and occasionally beat other slow horses and "earn their keep" by doing what they've been bred to do.

Other diversionary arguments put up like the number of horses found mistreated in paddocks, the lack of publicity for the (very occasional) death in a flat race, what the economic impact would be on the town of Warrnambool should their iconic May carnival lose jumps racing, if the recent controversial Youtube video (and story published on Back Page Lead) was unfairly edited or even whether the Australian's Patrick Smith is "running an agenda" against the sport, miss the point.

It simply boils down to this: In 2010, will society still accept horses dying on camera for entertainment purposes?

"Racetrack" Ralphy Horowitz is a full-time racing analyst for private clients and media commentator for Sport 927. He is a former producer at The Footy Show, Sunday Footy Show, 3AW & SEN.