my god! the whip thing just will not go away!

​I have little confidence in the British Horseracing Authority. It is my opinion that, seemingly, no member of racing’s regulatory body has a deep-seated and abiding love of the sport and knowledge of its long history. As good as Julie Harrington might be as a businesswoman and as successful as has been in her previous career ventures, she has no intuitive understanding of a sport that is complex, nuanced, with many strands making up its whole, populated by people who earn their crusts from the many diverse aspects of the sport. I believe the B.H.A. offers the sport poor governance and is the weak link that lies at the heart of the sport’s steady decline.
I offer as evidence to back-up my opinion, the whip.
There are many sides to the whip debate and I do not expect everyone to agree with my view that ‘one hit and that’s it’ is the way forward.
I expressed my opinion in the B.H.A.’s steering group’s survey, which should have been a good step forward in finding a workable solution to the long drawn-out and by now quite tiresome debate. I did criticise the inclusion of two jockeys on the steering group panel, arguing that it was like allowing the guilty to suggest their own sentence and as it has turned out I was proved correct as, eventually, the jockeys as a collective turned against the original proposals, approved and championed by Messer’s Scudamore and Macdonald, and had the ban on the backhand stroke overturned and are in the process of trying to have the above shoulder-height part of the regulations similarly thrown-out.
Not that the jockeys are wholly wrong. In fact, common-sense is coming from the weighing-room and not Portman Square. When I read Julie Harrington quoted as saying. ‘If we decided to leave it until after Cheltenham or Aintree, we would then have been told there wasn’t long until the Guineas, Derby and Royal Ascot’, I cringed. Not that she is incorrect. But the time to have implemented changes was obvious to all. For the flat it was during the winter all-weather season and for National Hunt it was through the Summer jumping season. Anyone with an innate understanding of the sport would not be making the mistake of changing the rules weeks away from the most popular race-meeting of the year.
In fact, a scientific approach should have been adopted from the very beginning, with various race-day trials conducted to provide data on all the possible scenarios from no-whip to the whip being left to the discretion of the jockeys. The B.H.A. trialled different coloured trim for hurdles and fences, studied the data scientists provided and chose, rightly or wrongly, white. But for the long-running whip debate they gave no thought to data collection and went with opinion and guesswork. Even worse, at least to my perspective, is that data makes clear that the whip, and the false belief that horse racing is cruel, is the leading reason why young people do not connect with the sport. Yet, even as Germany lowers use of the whip to three-strokes and France to five, jockeys riding under the jurisdiction of the B.H.A. can use up to seven-strokes. This flies in the face of their own research that use of the whip is the cause of young people showing no interest in the sport. And it also might be a reason why big business, outside of big bookmaking chains, does not use the sport for advertising and marketing as they did in the past.
Yes, I know the whip is a perception issue. Even the R.S.P.C.A. is of the same opinion. Yet the raised whip is preventing the vast majority of the public engaging with our sport and no argument based on the whip being padded and causing no pain or harm is going to shift public opinion. The sport must go to them as it is plain they are not going to come to us.
I also do not agree that racing will be less competitive if the whip is banned or severely limited. The lesser motivated horse, the lazy, blinkered, kind, will win less, if at all, but those horses who currently curl under the crack of the whip will become more willing to exert themselves and while they only win occasionally now, they will win more often in a whipless future. And jockeys will simply have to learn to push out a horse in a finish using strength and guile rather than resort to whip crack away. I also believe that fewer horses will suffer injuries as jockeys will be forced to keep their mounts running in a straight line rather than allowing them to run off-course, usually away from the whip.
And why have ‘hands and heels’ races for apprentices if there is to be no shift in the future to whip-restricted races?
For the entirety of its existence the B.H.A. have cocked-up the whole whip issue and the harder they try to find a workable solution the more they cock it up. In the coming twelve-months an embarrassingly high number of jockeys will suffer whip bans, with many disqualifications that will annoy owners and trainers and pour unlimited amounts of humiliation on the sport. And for what purpose? To prove how tough the B.H.A. are when it comes to jockeys breaking whip rules?
It's not Julie Harrington’s fault. She does not understand the sport she presides over. In fact, the Jockeys Association are more to blame as they have offered nothing but criticism of any whip resolution for decades, rather than seeing the sport as a whole and solely concentrated on the views and aims of its membership.
The suspension of jockeys for 3-weeks or 3-months is not the answer. The answer is pick a number, 1, 3, 5 or 6, or even nil, and let that be the absolute number of strokes a jockey can use to encourage his or her horse in a finish. Never mind backhand or forehand or over shoulder height. Set a number lower than 7 and stick to it. If its 1, which one day it will be, and remember we may have a Labour government in eighteen-months-time and they have threatened to abolish use of the whip altogether, and any stroke above that number will result in that same number of weeks suspension. I stroke above the permitted number, I week suspension. 2 above, 2-weeks and so on. Clear-cut. Precise. End of debate. And hopefully the public will look upon us more kindly in the future.