let's whip the sport some more.

​I did not expect my ‘one hit and that’s it’ recommendation to win traction with the Whip Consultation Steering Group and do not criticise their decision to restrict whip use to back-hand only out of pique. What irks me is that they had the opportunity to kick horse racing’s enemies into touch and put to sleep this whole whip controversy for all-time. But, as is always the case in racing, the B.H.A., in approving the recommendations, have fudged the issue, allowing themselves wriggle-room come the next long debate on the matter.
It is not all bad news, though. The most controversial aspect of the new rules is to me the most necessary. Disqualification when jockeys win at all costs, or exceed the new whip rules, is the saving grace. Except a jockey can exceed the whip rules by four hits before disqualification is mandatory. And why, when the B.H.A. make great play that interference rules in this country are in accordance with interference rules in other countries, leave the number of strikes the same and not restrict to five-strokes as in France and Germany, two countries where British jockeys are often successful and rarely exceed the whip rules?
It is true, and commendable, that penalties for going over the limit of strikes and when the whip is used above shoulder height is to be increased, with double suspensions in major races. But why not all races. Abuse, if you believe hitting an animal with a whip is abuse, is abuse whether the horse is a selling plater or a Derby winner. And making the rules universal for all races would make riding a finish routine for the jockey, without him or her having to remember what grade of race they are riding in. There is too much shade and shadow in the new rules, with too many I’s still to be crossed. The B.H.A. have not even set a date for when the new rules come into force. I would have preferred a set date, with three or four months in incremental races per week, per day and per meeting, to allow jockeys to slowly change and perfect the new style of whip use. I would have set January 1st for the flat and May 1st 2023 for the jumps. Afterall, it has taken them over 2-years to come to this fudged conclusion, what would it matter to wait a further 5-months to set the new rules in motion?
Don’t get me wrong. Allowing only the backhand stroke and outlawing the forehand strike is definitely the right road to be taking on this issue and Tom Scudamore and P.J. McDonald’s optimism that the jockeys will accept the new rules without getting into a flap is nothing but positive. Yet after over two-years of consultation there remains enough wriggle-room for it to become a tiger trap for the sport. I would have loathed the sport to have taken the Scandinavian route and ban the whip altogether but at least they have achieved some form of finality.
And, of course, there is already a whole barrel-load of bleating on behalf of the poor old punter. Same old, same old. If someone has a large punt on an odds-on favourite and to get the horse home in front the jockey incurs disqualification, the punter will just have to lump it in the same as when a horse falls at the last, veers off a straight course or suffers an injury. The new disqualification rules will become just another interesting facet of the sport. And, of course, the steering panel have not adjudicated on whether a disqualification will take place before or after the official result is declared. As I said, too much shade and shadow.
Given all the varying options, and disqualifying my own proposal, the solution might have been no more than five strokes in the backhand, suspension for the jockey going one or two strokes over the limit and mandatory, not discretionary, disqualification at three or over, the same rule to apply to every race, not just the big t.v. races. 
Hear me, the whip debate will run and run and run, with more draconian rules somewhere down the line and no Julie Harrington ‘Having something that we feel is a deep enough and strong enough look, so that people don’t feel the need to intervene, is also important for us as a sport’ does not cut it as already World Horse Welfare is intervening.