By Fran Berry
The whip debate is not a new phenomenon. Who could forget High-Rise winning the Derby under Olivier Peslier in 1998?
He beat City Honours and John Reid by just a head but gave High-Rise four quick back- handers on the line to win by that narrow margin. Some people felt strongly that Peslier and High-Rise should have lost the race on the day.
I have to say, I was against putting a number on whip use to start with and felt all it took was a bit of common sense to police it.
However, there is no point talking about that as that ship has sailed and, on the whole, I think the rules have worked well throughout the past decade.
The horse at the centre of this latest whip debate is the Grand National hero Noble Yeats. He was ridden to that famous victory at Aintree by Sam Waley-Coen, who was banned for nine days but only fined 400 pounds afterwards, presumably because he was an amateur. That was a real win-at-all-costs ride.
Since then, Harry Skelton was handed a seven-day ban and a £2,900 fine for using his whip above the permitted height when winning the Coral Gold Cup on Le Milos. At the time, I didn't notice much wrong with the ride but, when you look back on it, you'd have to say it was another win-at-all-cost ride and he just hung on to win.
But what has surprised me most about these new whip proposals is that there wasn't uproar when they were first mooted in the spring. As an ex-jockey, I have to say I wasn't happy when I read through the proposals back in July, particularly the forehand and backhand usage of the whip.
That is potentially a huge change and could have major consequences. To my mind, these proposed changes make no real sense. There is a lot of artistry involved with using the whip in the forehand position. When it is used right, it is quite rhythmical and, Frankie Dettori for example, is one of the masters of this particular craft.
People have lost sight with the forehand position in terms of making contact with the horse's rear end but it is also a great tool to make the horse go forward. There's no better example of this than when Frankie has his whip up by the horse's neck and then pulls it through quite quickly from his left to his right hand and vice versa.
All of that craftsmanship will be eliminated from race-riding if you tie people down to implementing the backhand position only. You are going to lose a lot of the artistry, not to mention the number of riders with a short reach who will struggle to adapt.
For all of those reasons and, for the fact that Sean Bowen got four days for hitting Noble Yeats in the wrong place when trying to use the whip in the backhand position and ride within those new rules at Aintree recently, I think it's a bad move.
There will be an increased chance that jockeys will land short and hit the horses in the wrong place and you are also removing the rhythm and artistry from race-riding with these new rules.
Another alarming situation that could develop under the proposed changes is horses being disqualified from races a number of days-if not weeks-after they have taken place if the rider has gone over the permitted number of strikes en route to victory.
Imagine a situation at somewhere like Cheltenham where the winner is walking back into the enclosure, people are going crazy celebrating and everyone on Racing TV or ITV Racing are not concentrating on that, but they are rewinding the video tape to see if the rider in question stayed within the limit.
They'll be weighed in, have the photos taken and the post-race interviews will be done, then 20 minutes later, we will all realise that the rider went over the permitted limit and that he or she is likely to be disqualified.
That's all bad enough but they are not even talking about disqualifying on the day, it will all happen a few days or weeks later whenever they schedule the hearing, so how is that fair on the people who are there on the day or for those who backed the runner-up? It's a complete cop-out and it makes no sense to me at all.
If you are going to bring in a disqualification, it needs to be done there and then. There was a high-profile disqualification in Australia the other day involving Blake Shinn, who had returned from riding in Hong Kong for a couple of years.
He dead-heated in a race in Australia but lost it in the stewards' room because he went well over the agreed limit on strikes. The stewards demoted him there and then. Going down that route would not be a bad thing going forward.
If we bring in an agreed limit on strikes and disqualify jockeys who go over that limit, it needs to be done on the day and not retrospectively. There would be no grey areas that way and I think riders will adapt, as long as they can use the whip in their forehand as well.
Another disappointing aspect of these proposed new rules is the timing of it all. How the BHA thinks that introducing these new rules two months before the Cheltenham festival is a good idea is beyond me.
Don't forget that the last time the BHA made changes to the whip rules, they brought them in 10 or 11 days before the inaugural British Champions Day which prompted the then champion jockey Richard Hughes to hand in his licence.
Christophe Soumillon went on to win the British Champion S. on Vision D'Etat and lost the prize money, which was in the region of €40,000 for his share alone. That was a good example of bad timing and bad rules and it was rightly rescinded soon afterwards.
Whatever changes the BHA brings in, it needs to be introduced during the summer jumping for National Hunt and on the all-weather season for the Flat to allow a bedding in period. To think about introducing these new rules in the build-up to the most high-profile meeting in the calendar shows the disconnect between the BHA and the good people that they have working on the ground.
From a British perspective, there is this need to be seen to be doing something to appease outside forces who may or may not exist. Where are the people protesting outside the tracks about the whip? Paul Nicholls said this week that he has never had an email about the whip. He's had plenty of emails about horses getting beaten but none about the whip. So where is all this pressure coming from?
It's all very worrying and is illustrative of how the BHA is run. From my time riding there and my own experiences, I know there is a big disconnect between the officials on the ground and the people in London. That is reflective of some of the decisions that have been made in recent years and this latest one smells bad.
They should have learned from what happened with Soumillon on British Champions Day in 2011 but they didn't. That says it all about the organisation and the ethos of the place to think that rolling out these changes on the eve of the Cheltenham festival is a good move.
I am still friendly with a lot of jockeys who are still riding in Britain and they feel that, whilst Tom Scudamore and PJ McDonald were brought into the fold, it wasn't fair for just one jockey from each code to represent the views of a community of riders on such a huge issue.
Everyone thought they might adapt to the new rules but, off the back of the Noble Yeats incident, and with Sean Bowen being such a beautiful rider, it has finally filtered through to everyone that this simply won't work. That's where all the discontent is coming from.
We're quite lucky in Ireland that, for all of the faults of the IHRB, and there are many, there is a good working relationship between the industry stakeholders and the authorities. The authorities adopt a sensible approach to the whip in Ireland and are more interested in doing what's right for racing rather than appeasing those outside of the sport.
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