let's talk about aintree, the whip and billy loughnane.

​Be honest; do you think the Grand National is suffering death by a thousand cuts? Sadly, that is my opinion and I am beginning to believe it would be grace-saving if Aintree and the B.H.A. simply announced the date when the last-ever Grand National will be run as it would be more dignified if the sport itself buried its jewel in the crown in the annals of sporting history rather than allow its ignorant detractors achieve its ghastly ambitions. 
What Aintree, Suleka Varma, the Jockey Club and the B.H.A. do not comprehend due to their impulsive need to protect not a race but its cash-cow, is that every change to the race they implement, every time the distance is altered, the number of runners reduced, the threshold rating raised or the fences lowered or moved, they are empowering protestors to protest longer, harder, to up the ante and cry crocodile tears down more lenses of more cameras. And after the Jockey Club’s success in the courts to ensure the Epsom Derby was run without incident, it will annually cost the Jockey Club a similar amount of money to achieve an uneventful running of the Grand National.
When you have both the moral right and the law of the land on your side, you stand firm and link arms, you do not run for cover, hold long meetings in order come up with a plan that on the surface does not look like a white flag or a white feather.
What is much more to be feared, now that Aintree intend to respond year-on-year to any of the many eventualities that might occur during the race, is that come the next equine death, the next pile-up caused by a loose horse or a horse refusing, they will be obligated to make more changes, if only cosmetic and unlikely to put right what was the latest thing to go wrong and look bad in front of the camera. It is death by a thousand cuts. It is the sport kicking itself in the ball-sacks yet again. Ginger McCain and Red Rum must be turning somersaults in their graves at the adulteration of the race they lived-for!

The current whip rule is yet another example of the sport’s administrators slapping themselves on the back for a ‘job well-done’ while ignoring the obvious criticism that banning jockeys wholesale after a big meeting only achieves the populace idea that jockeys must be carpet-beaters and animal abusers. The problem now, as I see it, is the topping-up procedure. It doesn’t matter what went before Ascot’s Champions Day, the trivial violations of the whip rules perpetrated by Frankie Dettori, his sixteen-day ban is evidence to our distractors that the sport turns a blind eye to their perceived view that horse racing’s only use of the horse is for monetary gain and jockeys are allowed to get away with ‘animal abuse’ to achieve the greatest profit.
If Group 1 races are to be treated differently to all other races, jockeys who exceed the maximum number strokes of the whip or if they use the whip incorrectly, bans imposed should apply only to Group 1 races, including the classics. If jockeys were to be banned from riding in the next six Group 1’s or ten or sixteen, the loss of earnings and kudos would be more keenly felt. The only other option is to disqualify the horse so that the owner and trainer also feel the pain. The issue of the whip, as with the Grand National, is causing death by a thousand cuts. I remain convinced the only solution to the problem of public perception is to reduce the whip to ‘one hit and that’s it’ or to remove its use altogether. At present, all we are achieving is nothing at all, just as it was before the whip was seen as any sort of a problem.
And to circle back to the Grand National, one change Aintree could have implemented that would have gained approval from our distractors, would be to stop jockeys using their whip after the last fence. Very few horses run on strongly after the last fence, with most running on empty. The unedifying sight of a jockey using the whip to urge on a very tired horse is grist to the mill of those with the ambition to see evil where is evil is not present and does little inspire the rational observer to fall in love with the sport.

One final comment: in time, given he continues to smile and stays away from alcohol, drugs, the wrong food and naughty women, the jockey the public will next adore, if not in the same ebullient way as Frankie, is Billy Loughnane. One of the leading trainers, perhaps John and Thady Gosden or Michael Stoute, should snap him up as in the next two or three-years he is going to take William Buick’s championship title away from him. Perhaps next year! He is of that calibre.