riding offences.

​The differing opinions over appropriate penalties for careless riding offences demonstrate that it is not a black or white issue. To my mind, though, the easiest solution is to agree that every horse race, from Newton Abbot to Perth, from a Monday evening at Wolverhampton to Royal Ascot, is not a solo enterprise but a team effort where all involved win together and lose together.
Brant Dunshea, the B.H.A.’s chief regulatory officer, is, if he will forgive my impertinence, rather naïve when he suggests it is wrong to describe a suspension as nothing more than a ‘holiday’ to a jockey because they are denied income during that period of time. The top jockeys are wealthy men and women nowadays, big savings draw big interest, and though they have expenses we might not appreciate, a two-day suspension when Chelmsford or Redcar would have been their employment destination is not going to bother them a whole lot. And jockeys are brighter than some people credit them, they can juggle an equation involving a possible two-day ban starting in a week equals not riding at Chelmsford and Redcar. You can be sure if the two-day ban starting in a week prevented them from riding at Royal Ascot or any other major meeting, they might be more circumspect when it comes to doing all he can to keep a horse bumping into a rival.
As Ben Curtis was quoted: ‘no jockey sets out to injure a horse or a fellow jockey’. In the same way when we set off in our cars we do not intend to crash into another car or hit a wall with our own car. Sometimes, though, circumstances can allow this to happen to the best of drivers. As Ben Curtis also said: ‘we all make mistakes.’
Ryan Moore is one of the great jockeys of the present era. Coolmore employ him, so they must believe he is the best of a very good group of senior riders at the moment. Yet even he is vulnerable to the odd mistake now and then. I admit I was astonished he kept that race at Glorious Goodwood. It seems, as the rules are written, if you are on the best horse in the race, you can bend the rules to fit your actions. As things stand, as Kevin Blake keeps emphasising, sooner or later a jockey will be seriously injured (or worse) if the fine line between careless and dangerous riding is not defined with a clarity that is clearly understood by all parties before the stewards begin their inquiry.
In fact, the solution to the problem is not defining or rewriting the careless riding rule but to disqualify, even if the first past the post is ten-lengths in front of the second. Yes, there will be protests, especially when the winner wins easily, by punters and effected owners, but it is the only clear-cut way to ensure jockeys only deviant from a straight line when he or she loses control of their horse, if only momentarily, and not when they have made the decision to veer towards the rail or to intimidate rivals. Jockeys do it all the time, allowing their horse to roll into the running rail or deliberately drifting off a true line.
I thought there used to be a rule that jockeys were supposed to keep a straight course for a furlong when leaving the stalls. If that is not the case, there should be such a rule. True in the first furlong, true in the last furlong, should be the motto.
Horse, jockey, trainer, owner, stable staff, are one team, yet at the moment, when a horse behaves erratically, which perhaps is not always the fault of the jockey but could also be a failing of the methods used by trainers to break-in, school and educate the horses in their charge, yet only the jockey suffers as a result of stewards’ inquiries. The 5-day suspension handed out by the Goodwood stewards’ to Ryan Moore might be a nuisance to him but it will not leave a mark on his career or his earning capacity. 
I cannot determine if Ryan Moore was unlucky to get five-days from his ride on Tilsit. I thought at the time that he made a conscious decision to move closer to the other runners, causing Tilsit to become momentarily unbalanced, if not confused (he is an immature horse, remember) so perhaps he did push the first domino and he was culpable for what followed.
Correct me if I am wrong, but when a jockey is suspended for any riding offence, they do not forfeit either their riding fee or percentage of the prize money. So, if the race is a Group I or classic worth, say half-a-million or more to the winner, holding on to their share of the winners’ prize will cover any accompanying suspension.
If I were judge and jury of the Goodwood race, and all similar inquiries, I would have disqualified the winner and placed him third and the jockey would have forfeited his riding fee and percentage of the prize money. The riding offence may have strayed across careless into dangerous (a car out-of-control on the motorway would be considered a dangerous incident even if the driver had suffered a heart attack) but it was not deliberate, which the 5-day ban would suggest to a casual observer.
When you put forward disqualification as the solution to riding offences, the counter-argument runs along the lines of it is unfair to the poor punter and would disadvantage the owner and taint him against owning horses in the future. No one seems to notice that punters who backed the second horse or the horse promoted to first place would be advantaged by disqualification or that the owner of the disqualified horse might actually expect his jockey to bend or break the rules in order to achieve victory. To my mind, the two halves of this argument equal themselves out.