The Whip (AGAIN).

​There are two conflicting sides to this argument, this battle of conscience. There are those, mainly, though not exclusively, people outside of the sport who closely associate horse racing with jockeys’ merciless use of the whip for the monetary gain of humans, while on the other side of the coin is the view that it is wrong to punish a jockey for giving 100% in the struggle for victory.
The jockeys’ view that the whip they use nowadays is as soft as a feather duster and causes a horse no suffering is perhaps valid. The problem is though one of perception. I cannot legally hit my other half ten times with either a whip or feather duster no matter what the provocation. I also cannot legally hit a dog or any other animal with a whip or feather duster. So it must be asked why the law is disregarded when it comes to horses in the throes of racing. Someday this might even be challenged in a court of law. In fact if the whip is now a harmless tool of the trade it must be useless to a rider as a device of correction when for example a horse persistently naps or refuses to go forward.
I am not of the opinion that horses, at least nowadays, suffer harm from the whip. Indeed it might be argued, and in the near future it might be proved, that horses will be subjected to even harder races if the jockey must extort greater effort from his mount through pushing, kicking and hollering. But that is unproven and will remain so until the whip is banned as a device for extorting greater effort.
Personally I believe the powers-that-be should introduce, both for flat and jumping, a series of ‘hands and heels’ races for professional jockeys over all distances. Of course some horses and some jockeys will be disadvantaged, while others will come into their own. There will be hollering and tears of exasperation by jockeys and trainers opposed to a ban on the whip, at least at first, and we (those of us who believe a ban to be both inevitable and welcome) must be prepared to proven wrong, and such a ban should not confer any wrong doing in the past by the sport. But perception is evidence as far as our opponents are concerned and we must face the fact that there are far more of them than there are of us.
A greater problem than the whip itself are the rules limiting the use of the whip. It doesn’t really matter if the powers-that-be impose a ten strike maximum or eight, four or one, it is incongruous to not disqualify when the rule is broken by one strike too many or twenty when a jockey can lose a race for simply allowing his mount to drift into and bump another horse. A jockey can even lose a race for failing to pull his stick from one hand to the other if he impedes another runner. In the perception of our opponents it is less wrong to hit a horse ten or twelve times than it is to fail to keep a straight course.
If we want to grow our sport, or even, I suspect, maintain its present day level of popularity, we cannot afford to alienate ourselves from the millions who perceive horse racing to be an excess of whip bordering on cruelty conducted for no other reason than as entertainment for the rich and even richer. It is very difficult for the public to believe that jockeys can have a deep affection for the horse when at the finish of a race they are prepared to beat nine bells out of them in order to gain the greater percentage of reward.
I personally believe we have reached a point when we need to legislate one of two ways. We either disqualify when a jockey transgresses the whip rules or we ban the whip altogether as a device for extorting greater effort. If we take the second option, which is where public opinion will take us in the future anyway, it should not be brought in overnight but over several seasons, with more and more ‘hands and heels’ races so that jockeys can adjust to the new norm.
While I abhor and detest those who think the horse to be merely ‘the engine’ of the sport, we must accept that though he is the genuine hero the horse cannot defend the sport. We must rely on the jockey to be the spokesperson for himself, the horse and the sport and we cannot allow the public to think of him as an equine abuser. It is he or she who take the most risks, who suffer the most injury. Perhaps in limiting the use of the whip we will be protecting, if not them as individuals, the public perception of them as a collective.
We must not forget that the sport of fox-hunting is restricted by a law that is unlikely ever to be repealed due to the limited support of the public for the chasing and killing of foxes. It is not many years ago that such a prohibition would have been considered as impossible to implement. Outside the gates of Aintree next week will be sad and ignorant people demanding a similar prohibition on National Hunt racing, who believe passionately that horse racing is at best an abuse of horses and at worst a cruelty as equal as dog-fighting or bear-baiting. These people might increase in number. These people will use the whip to beat us with.
We need to bite the bullet, to be proactive in protecting the sport.