if i could lecture members of the weighing room - this is what i would say.

​On my book-shelves I have nearly 200 books on various aspects of horse racing, from histories of racecourses to histories of individual races, through to books on great racehorses and biographies and autobiographies of trainers and jockeys. The latter is my favourite type of racing book. I am currently reading Tommy Weston’s autobiography after finishing Bobby Beasley’s ‘Second Start’. Jockeys are at the core of our sport, at the cliff-face of the hurly-burly, the pointy-end of the sport. They know the horse, the trainer, the owner, and most likely the groom leading up. Of all the combatants in the sport it is the jockey I most respect. Though to be truthful, used to respect.
This is why I have found the Dunne-Frost case so perturbing. It has lessened my respect for jockeys, drilled home to me that the men and women of the weighing room are far-removed from heroes and heroines; they are ordinary, like the rest of us, bound-up in prejudice, bias, envy and with a fear of anyone who is amongst them who is not quite made of the same stuff as them.
The truth of the matter is that Bryony Frost quite often is tactically more aware than her male colleagues, dictates races as Ruby Walsh once did, hoodwinking other jockeys to ride races that compromise their prospects of winning. Dunne couldn’t handle that, could he?
A quote by one of you in the Racing Post began to resonate with me in the course of the enquiry into the allegations against Robbie Dunne. One of you said that Bryony had no respect for the senior jockeys. Well, she has proved during the passage of 2021 that she has a heart of oak, winning major races while being ostracised by her colleagues. And yet you are aggrieved that she has no respect for senior jockeys who were in a position to intervene, to suggest her abuser ‘back-off’, perhaps sit down and cool-off, who might have put an arm around her shoulders and offered advice, if not arbitration. How can anyone seriously expect respect when they sit on their hands, their ears muffled, and support the aggressor whilst ignoring the hurt of the victim?
One of you accepted she is a brilliant jockey and yet called into question her tactic of starting a race wide of the other runners, and here I reference the King George, knowing the senior jockeys would try to block her passage to the first fence and shuffle her back. She suspected what might happen and came up with a tactic to prevent her race being compromised. I she too clever for you?
As all jockeys are told to do, she does not let a jockey up her inside coming into the straight. Yet that too was brought-up as an example of her lack of respect.
Robbie Dunne was charged and found guilty of bullying and bringing the sport into disrepute. Yet all of you are as guilty. For whatever petty reason, you all allowed Dunne to commit his ‘crime’. One of you, the President of the P.J.A., perhaps, should have gone to him and made him step away. None of you thought to do that and you let him down badly because of it. He is banned from riding not solely because he is a bully but because you all allowed him to bully. You believe yourselves to be his friend, yet none of you were friend enough to offer him good advice. You are responsible for his punishment, more so than Bryony or the B.H.A.
All of you who lined-up to support Dunne, who spoke-up for him, have a moral duty to individually apologise to Bryony Frost for the part you all played in allowing this sorry state of affairs to begin and to continue for so long.
‘Putting someone through the wing’ is not a common phrase, bandied about with a knowing wink of the eye, as before the advent of patrol cameras it was accepted practise for jockeys to ‘get their own back’ on a colleague by forcing them out through the wing. Bobby Beasley wrote about in his book ‘Second Start’.
And for those who believe Dunne’s punishment to be severe, you should know that in the real workplace, where people work not because they want to but because they have to to pay the bills, he would have been sacked on the spot if found guilty of bullying a work colleague. In 18-months, or 15 if he is a good boy, he will be permitted to return to work, working in the same environment as the woman he bullied. Can that be right? It would not happen in the real world, would it?
In the cold light of day, as confirmed by racegoers, especially at Sandown when she was received into the winning enclosure with the sort of applause generally only afforded great horses, Frost is an asset to our sport, whilst Dunne is not. If he chooses not to reapply for his licence he will not be missed. In fact, if he does return, ask yourself how spectators will react to him? In the same manner you reacted when you heard Frost had put in an official complaint to the B.H.A.?
You have all behaved, though I accept there might be exceptions amongst you, like over-indulged school-children who have had their kangaroo court taken from them. Bryony did not suggest the environment of the weighing room was ‘rancid’; in fact, no one suggested it was ‘rancid’; though the way you ignored Bryony’s suffering to concentrate on the slight handed-out to yourselves was selfish and indulgent and gave credence to the word.
One of your number was at pains to inform the public that the weighing room was full of kind-hearted people who were hurting because a lawyer acting on behalf of the B.H.A. in an effort to win his case used a word you took offence to. Yet not one of you stood up in that weighing room to compare the emotional and psychological hurt Bryony Frost was subjected to the one word said in the heat of battle by someone who I doubt has ever even looked-through the open door of a racecourse weighing-room. ‘Rancid’ versus eight-months of bullying: which would you choose to be subjected to?
In my eyes, the lot of you are a disgrace, those of you with young daughters harbouring the ambition to follow their fathers into the weighing room, especially so.