too much, too little. bans or fines?

​You hear it said that ‘I would not want to be a starter’, giving the impression to the uninitiated that starting a horse race is the equivalent of being a brain surgeon. I imagine being a jockey is far more technical and skilful than lining up horses, waving a flag and pressing the go switch.
And no, I do not think being a jump jockey is harder and more skilful than being a flat jockey. Both have their separate skill-sets and problems to overcome. Jump jockeys obviously get injured more often than flat jockeys, though when the latter are splattered their injuries can be more severe.
I would like to provide statistics on how many flat and jump jockeys have died as a result of injuries sustained on British racecourses during the past fifty-years but when I entered that query into the search engine, the majority of articles were about how many horses have died. Something fishy about that, would you not agree?
In some ways flat jockeys are being tasked, on occasions, to deal with impossible to control situations. In the main, horses that run on the flat, two-year-olds and late maturing three-year-olds, can be too immature and lacking in the necessary strength to run straight for 5-furlongs let alone gallop round a bend and run straight as a gun-barrel in a head-bobbing, whip-wielding finish. To keep a 17-hand three-year-old galloping in a straight line requires strength in the saddle and a longer leg than jockeys ride at these days. How Holly Doyle achieves what she achieves being so slight and short amazes me. Though she is a force of nature and the horses she rides seem to know it.
But to get to my point. Flat jockey Adam Farragher has lost his appeal against a 7-day suspension imposed by the Kempton stewards for failing to ride-out for fourth-place. The stewards believed that Farragher had stopped riding with vigour four-strides from the line. Farragher in his defence said he had not eased-up and that his mount was very tired due to him hanging and pulling hard during the race. He also said that in his previous run he had troubling pulling the horse up at the end of the race and travelled a furlong passed the winning post before he gained control over the horse. He also said, and I thought this could have been verified through either video footage of the race or by someone of authority who was close to the exit shute, that the horse was ‘blowing very hard and looked distressed’.
I am not taking sides. Farragher perhaps infringed the rules on riding out to the line, perhaps there were mitigating circumstances. The point is, if we believe his testimony, that he acted in the best interests of his mount and to avoid a dangerous situation occuring, and it was not as if his actions made the difference between first and second-place, we should applaud his horsemanship not hauling him over the coals. His horse was tired, and after pulling and hanging for the best of seven-furlongs, I suspect Farragher was equally as fatigued and I dare say in his weakened state he was rightly concerned the horse might barge into another horse and perhaps cause a fall or pile-up. It happens, even on the flat.
Contrast the Farragher case with the 10-day suspension given to Michael Nolan after the Grand National for failing to pull-up Celebre D’Allan when the horse was, according to the stewards, in no fit state to continue. Nolan did pull-up the horse after jumping the last fence, hough whether he was instructed to by a vet or steward or he did so of his own volition I cannot say. And the horse was treated by vets on the course, in view of the public – not a good watch for the sport - delaying the start of the next race. Farragher, he believes, acted in the best interests of his horse, whereas Nolan, for whatever reason, did not act in the best interest of his horse. If guilty, Nolan, in my opinion, was perhaps lucky to get away with only a ten-day suspension. Farragher on the other hand, should have been given the benefit of the doubt instead of depriving him of earning a living for a week.
It is all too easy for stewards, and social media bloodhounds, to criticise a jockey for this that and the other, when they have no experience of the job jockeys do day-in, day-out. Let me ask this of the Kempton stewards and those on the disciplinary panel: did any of you contact the trainer of the horse in question to ask after the condition of the horse? What if the horse never runs as well again? What if the horse has a heart condition? What if the horse was in the throes of a medical or physical condition that explained why he hung and pulled that day? If horse welfare is as important as is stressed time and time again, why do the interests of the punter seem so often to come before the possible welfare of the horse?
Jockeys make mistakes, honest mistakes with neither malice or gain involved. Stewards, too, make errors of judgement. We all make mistakes. Yet unless that mistake has legal consequences none of us are hung out to public ridicule as jockeys can be.
Jockeys can lose more than 7-days-worth of pay through suspensions. In the next 7-days Farragher might have sat on a horse that goes on the course of the season to become a ‘superstar’ and it will not be Farragher who will be sharing the glory, it will be, most likely, the recipient of Farragher’s misfortune. Bans can be appropriate, but fines would be a fairer method of applying justice. If it is proved in the coming months that Farragher was correct in what he told the disciplinary panel, his fine can be refunded, his reputation reinstated.