the damned whip (again).

​Anyone familiar with this site will know I am strongly in favour of taking the sport in the direction of a one hit only or zero hit policy with the whip, and to this effect I advocate, as an experiment or scientific study, a series of hands and heels races for professional jockeys. This experiment could begin quietly with just one restricted race per week in the north of the country and the same in the south. Over the season this could increase to two races a week and upwards and should take in every kind of flat race, including group races and, of course, National Hunt.
For horse racing to have a long-term future its stakeholders must recognise that the world and its views on animal welfare have changed dramatically over the past two decades. The new maximum penalty for animal cruelty is about to increase from six months in prison to five years, and there are people who would find the new maximum too lenient. Myself included. One day someone, perhaps someone from within Animal Aid or the more radical faction of the R.S.P.C.A., no doubt in hope of building public support for their aims, will bring a private prosecution against a jockey found guilty of breaking the B.H.A.’s whip guidelines. We must be proactive on this matter. Not a knee-jerk reaction but a steady canter to the end-goal that might bring this long-running saga (I have read of a trainer writing in the 1970’s who thought the whip a contentious issue) to a conclusion.
It is interesting that trainers who advocate disqualifying a horse if its jockey breaks the whip rules and those who would prefer the jockey be suspended for 3-months or more agree that there is a problem in need of address. Yet the problem is allowed to fester.
The bookmakers are being hypocritical as usual. They say if the former solution is brought to bear punters will suffer. If I backed a runner-up to a horse whose jockey broke the whip rules, I would feel aggrieved. If that horse was disqualified, promoting my horse to first, I would be very happy indeed. The stance bookmakers are taking is ridiculous. Do they want no horse ever to be disqualified? Because that is the only conclusion that can be drawn on their stance. If a jockey loses the weight cloth and weighs in a stone light, do they want him to keep the race just so their winning punters do not feel aggrieved? Or if a jockey allows his horse to drift across the course, barging into other horses, perhaps causing an accident, yet contrives to still win the race, would they want that horse to keep the race in order to placate their punters?
I am also not in favour of the jockey being handed a 3-month suspension as this also affects the trainers and owners he may be contracted to. Also, it will do the image of the sport harm if our detractors can publicly say that one of our leading riders, Dettori, Doyle or Moore, for example, is serving a 3-month suspension from the sport due to breaking the whip rules (or should that be guidelines?).
If a lesser jockey was handed a similar penalty it might even take away his or her career.
The only fair and sensible solution to the on-going debate on use of the whip is to slowly wend our way to a one or zero hit policy. Failing that, if given the choice between disqualification and long-term bans for jockeys I would vote for the former. No one, in life in general or in sport, should gain from breaking the rules. Footballers who dive to cheat the referee into awarding a penalty are labelled ‘cheats’. Athletes who fail drug-tests are known forever as a ‘drug-cheat’. Cricketeers who use their nails or a blade to change the appearance of the ball are ‘cheats. Yet in racing jockeys who ignore the whip rules and make it known that if the reward is great enough, they will continue to do so are never referred to in the same vein. They are not ‘cheats’, they have simply tried the hardest to gain reward for the people who pay their salary and all that follows.
Sadly, for the sport, I do not think the B.H.A. are up to making a decision on this most divisive of issues affecting the image and future of the sport. It is a debate that has been allowed to boil away for decades, with self-interest allowed to undermine common-sense. This is a matter that needs to be resolved not sometime in the future but in the here and now. I suggest my resolution is the right way to go about the business. But for now, disqualification is the best policy. Let’s see if disqualification brings about a change of mindset in jockeys.