‘This initiative is a culture shift’: changing the face of industry wellbeing in New Zealand

Cover image courtesy of New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing

Earlier this year, American racing was stunned by the suicides, less than six weeks apart, of two of its brightest lights, jockeys Avery Whisman and Alex Canchari. Both were in their 20s and, by most accounts, with the world at their feet.

Their deaths forced the sport to have a long look inwards, questioning the sustained impacts over time of wasting, accidents and injuries. These were known adversities in the career of race riding, but hardly anyone ever spoke about them.

Gallery: Two American jockeys who lost their lives to suicide earlier this year

In the months since, there has been a notable upswing towards mental health awareness in American racing.

In April, the Jockeys’ Guild, in association with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), distributed a survey to a wide number of riders, asking how best it might support their health and welfare. The survey was part of an industry-wide initiative to provide riders with mental wellness support and resources.

“We want to put something out there that we can help whoever needs help,” said Hall of Fame jockey Johnny Velazquez. “We all go through tough times, and we all go through some sort of depression or anxiety. If we can help one individual, or two, three, whatever, then I’d be very grateful to get it done.”

In Australia, similar initiatives are ongoing. Thoroughbred Breeders Australia (TBA) has its Stud Staff Support Line, which offers telephone counselling sessions for workers across the breeding industry. Racing Victoria has similar with its Stableline for licensed, registered participants and their immediate families.

This week, however, the New Zealand industry leaped into the space with its own initiative to address mental health and wellbeing, helmed by Racing NZ across its three codes of thoroughbreds, harness and greyhounds. The initiative is an announced program that will tackle how the mental wellness conversation is approached across the New Zealand industry.

“This initiative is a culture shift, a community engagement piece,” said Bruce Sharrock, CEO of New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing (NZTR). “Our hope is it will run wider than just our industry, that it will go to all those people who connect with the industry too.

“The vision is to ultimately build a culture where it’s fine to have a conversation about not feeling great mentally. This program will be for industry by industry. We want to shift the mentality and the culture within the community to have those conversations about mental wellbeing in a comfortable way.”

The idea with this initiative is to normalise mental wellbeing for racing participants. When we spoke to Sharrock on Tuesday, he said the impetus for its creation was around the growing general need to address mental health.

Like a lot of people in the industry, Sharrock grew up around the war-cry of ‘harden up and carry on’. Men in particular, and especially men on the land, didn’t talk about mental issues. It was the generation of the strong, silent types.

“We’ve wanted for some time to build a more robust wellbeing program around our entire industry, across our three codes of racing,” he said. “In this day and age, that ‘you’ll be right’ attitude isn’t modern to mental wellbeing.”

Introducing Victoria McArthur

Key to the success of this initiative is the appointment by Racing NZ of Victoria McArthur, who is leading the program. McArthur has, for decades, worked in the not-for-profit sector, but her appointment to this role comes after she spearheaded MATES in the construction industry.

MATES is the industry-backed, research-based suicide prevention and support program in New Zealand. It has operated across the construction, mining and energy sectors since 2008, addressing the statistic of a worker lost every week to suicide, almost always a statistic specific to men.

McArthur led MATES in Construction New Zealand since its inception in 2019 to May this year. During that time, the organisation inducted more than 50,000 workers in general awareness training, delivering that program to almost 1600 construction sites across New Zealand. It was a critical, everyday addition to an industry affected by long hours and a stoic, ‘strong and silent type’ workforce.

McArthur left MATES with over 30 trained individuals deploying the organisation’s suicide prevention programs and support services around the country. She described MATES as a movement, not an organisation, after years of building it up into an industry-wide lifeline.

When she was approached by Bruce Sharrock earlier in the year to establish something similar across the New Zealand racing industry, it took her only a few weeks to consider how she might be able to pull it off in an industry she knew very little about.

“It was a real coup to get Victoria,” Sharrock said. “MATES is a model that has certainly grabbed the attention of a lot of people, and I’d been in touch with her about various things for the best part of 12 months.

“As luck would have it, Victoria’s time with MATES came to an end and she was looking for a new challenge. My cheeky nature asked her if she’d come and do similar for us, and it took her only a few days to come back to us interested. It escalated very quickly then and we’re very fortunate.”

McArthur has no background in any sort of racing. In this instance, it’s an advantage because she’s bringing fresh eyes to an industry that is steeped in routine and tradition.

For example, she flagged the possibly confronting nature of the stewards’ room recently for new or young jockeys with its ‘sir’ and ‘madam’ vernacular. To industry participants, it’s just normal discourse in that environment, but McArthur was able to see how that level or formality might be intimidating. She hadn’t seen it for decades in any other setting.

“Victoria is well-trained, but she is one of those people that you can talk to,” Sharrock said. “She is looking at the industry through a different lens. She’s seeing all these different groups of people with different pressures and stresses. Most industry people are talking about the animal, but she’s looking at it for the human, which is great because that’s what she’s here to do.

“Sometimes having an unbiased, unclouded view of what you’re looking at is a positive thing, in my view. Otherwise you’re tainted with the past and predetermined thoughts about what’s going on.”

Sharrock describes McArthur as friendly and professional. She has a way about her that befits this type of sensitive role.

McArthur has worked previously for Keystone Trust as a general manager, and a communications and fundraising manager for Diabetes NZ. She’s been a CEO, manager and marketing brain, and she graduated from the University of Auckland with a post-graduate diploma in business marketing.

“I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone across the three racing codes to develop a program that is fit for purpose within the industry,” she said in a statement this week. “Racing NZ already has some great people that have been supporting the mental health of their workforce, and we will be drawing on this knowledge as we work collectively towards a better future for all participants.”

Entain onboard

One of the first steps for McArthur and her team will be data collection, which will commence with a research study to isolate the metrics around poor mental health in New Zealand.

For example, how prevalent is it, and how bad is it among those affected by it?

“The data is going to be around what exactly our challenges are,” Sharrock said. “That will be the first phase, doing the research thoroughly so that we know what we’re dealing with in detail. That way, we can deliver a program that is bespoke to the industry and not just a general societal one.”

The data will take some months to build. It will come from appointed researchers by Racing NZ, who will comb existing data. There will be focus groups and surveys, much like that distributed to American jockeys this year.

Research teams will look at coroners’ reports related to suicide deaths in the past, going back generations to see if occupations marry up to the racing industry in any shape or form. It will be an exhaustive, comprehensive process.

And all of this is required for what Sharrock hopes will eventuate in preventative initiatives, addressing the underlying causes of poor mental wellbeing, rather than just treating the symptoms of it later on.

“The overarching theory of the program is about creating a community of preventative discussion, as opposed to the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff dealing with issues when they become severe,” Sharrock said. “If you’re in a workplace where you know you can go talk to someone when you’re not having the best of days, and you know that person is qualified to have that conversation with you, then that’s going to help.”

The initiative has been generously supported by Entain Australia and New Zealand, which is injecting a significant, six-figure annual sum into getting this program off the ground. It’s been a great boost in the wake of Entain being the key wagering partner of TAB NZ, an alliance that is only months old.

“I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time with Dean Shannon (Entrain CEO of Australia and New Zealand) when he first came over to launch Entain as our new wagering partner,” Sharrock said. “I talked to him about this wellbeing concept that we’d been building, and approached him as a partner that sees the value in it. He could see it, and simple as that said ‘consider it done’, which is great. That’s been invaluable.”

Sharrock, McArthur and the team will spend the next few weeks getting the blocks of the program off the ground. For McArthur, it will be an insightful period as she gets to know the Kiwi industry in all forms.

It’s a promising project, one that will be hoping for the same grassroots success as its counterpart, MATES.