The end of the whip talk

Slightly misleading title - depends how you read it. I’ve given my ideas on the whip previously and haven’t changed them. However, if racing were to keep the current rules I would prefer them to automatically disqualify any horse whose jockey breaks the rules. That would leave the whip on slow-mo replays but not with the ‘aggressive’ force used by Maguire in the National (sorry for using that example again). The present rules can be briefly found here.

On another level, were the whip to be banned, say, after the final fence, or throughout, it would have implications on global rules, particularly on the flat (probably not at all on the jumps). Currently, from what I can see, there are no global rules, such as Fifa’s in football, which is quite handy. Also, were Britain to make changes, they would maybe be copied across the world rather than there be a boycott. Things would probably stay as they are for the immediate future with foreign jockeys adapting. Whether trainers will not want to come to the UK is a question I cannot answer but it’s worth asking.

I’d also be interested as to whether point-to-point racing would change its rules in line with any ban. I wouldn’t go anywhere near suggesting I know what the point-to-point rules are and would guess the disciplinary system isn’t up to much, but given that many jockeys come through these ranks it would seem strange for them to begin their careers using a whip in finishes and when becoming professional to stop.

This is my third and, I hope, final post on the whip for now. The debate continues and, as normal for a blogger, it’s been hard to resist giving my opinion. But this blog was not meant for constant talk about the whip and as I imagine for many in racing, they’d rather talk about something else. So would I.

Do you have a racing blog?

After a first few days blogging I'm beginning to get to grips with basic technology. But would like to, at some point make this a better blog and looking better.

I want to put a big list of blogs on the side of my page and will soon search the net for them but if you have a racing blog which isn't on my list then please tell me in the comments below and whether its a tipping or general blog. Any racing blog is fine but I'd like to separate the two. Thanks very much, Tim.

My views on public opinion and the whip

Last day before going back to Uni and last day of gym membership. I will now revert to being an academic workhorse (OK thats probably not going to happen) and a physical slob (odds on chance). Oxford has decided it’s a great idea for us all to do exams on Bank Holiday Friday morning and Saturday afternoon. I’m sure there’s something big on TV we’ll be missing... oh of course, the 2000 Guineas. Anyway, here’s my views on the whip.

Towcester’s announcement they intend to ban the whip was wrong. In the same way Stoke and Bolton couldn’t announce that their managers had agreed they fancied playing their FA Cup semi-final for 60 minutes rather than 90, a racecourse can’t suddenly decide it is changing the rules of racing. It would look amateurish and farcical. The sport would appear unregulated. The British Horseracing Authority is there for a reason.

They did, however, make some interesting points which have stirred up a bit of interest especially after David Ashforth’s article in the Racing Post where he called for a ban on the whip. The debate has moved centre-stage with regular national newspaper articles on the topic. The same thing happened in 2008 and I’d recommend reading this article from then in The Times which includes lengthy opinion from David Muir (RSPCA) and Choc Thornton. Back then the current BHA Communications Director, Paul Struthers said correctly: “Things cannot stay as they are, so we are starting with a blank sheet of paper. Racing needs to get on top of this problem before other people start trying to do it for us.” The solution was harsher whip bans, which from a welfare point of view are correct. The whip is not cruel unless abused by excessive force or frequency which is what was meant to be stamped out. Jason Maguire in the Grand National is one of many examples which would suggest it probably wasn’t.

Towcester claim that their ban would attract more people to the races. The BHA and Rfc say they are to undertake market research on whether people are put off racing by the whip. As a young child I wasn’t personally put off by the whip at all and remember strangely seeing it as quite cool. I was, however, an existing racing follower and my initial guess now is that in this world where political correctness (which is usually incorrect) is rife, future children will be brought up where the whip seems a strange and unwarranted oddity. Since meeting people at university from metropolitan backgrounds I’ve had to learn to cut out virtually all my jokes which could potentially offend anyone (even the College cat) or risk having my head blown off by some feminist do-gooder. Their children are going to take political correctness as the norm. There may be the odd backlash but the tide of opinion is moving in this direction. This has benefits – the next generation will not tolerate any racism whatsoever. But it also means racing must adjust itself so to be tolerated in the future.

ATR’s Sean Boyce disagrees: “First off there is little or no evidence of the public ‘outrage’ that we’re seeking to address. Secondly public opinion is often wrong. Thirdly, public opinion is never set in stone. It is fluid, mutable and we have a key part to play in shaping it.”

The BHA should make sure their research is thorough, not token, and let us know the results in an unbiased way before they make any announcement on the whip. I wait with anticipation but would rather they tell us now what this surveying will consist of.

Assuming my guess is right about public attitudes, how should racing respond? Like I predict many others have, I have changed my mind over this issue. Two years ago I would have told you to get lost and keep things the same because the whip isn’t cruel. Last year until a fortnight ago, I held Ashforth’s position before he had made it. I saw the banning of the whip to hit a horse during a race as a great signal racing could make to show it was modern, 21^st Century and totally going with the Racing For Change thing. The PPEist in me would compare this to Blair’s Clause IV moment, a bold symbolic modernising move which David Cameron’s team have repeatedly sought to emulate, to rid his party of its old ‘nasty’ image. Were it to be done by racing without pressure from outsiders then it would generate tons of positive publicity for the sport across the national news bulletins and media outlets. I never considered the whip cruel but thought it unnecessary.

My position has changed to one I can’t be certain, but am pretty sure, I’ll keep. David Muir, the RSPCA’s Equine Consultant wrote in 2008:

“In my view, it is only fair that a jockey should be able to bring a horse to attention. They are pack animals and during a race they can revert to herd instincts and get distracted. Using a whip to make them concentrate is acceptable.

 The new whip has been generally accepted now, especially by the National Hunt jockeys. The old one, which was a nylon rod with a leather thong on the end, could inflict unnecessary levels of pain; this one does not. But what still causes me a problem is excessive force or frequency and the rules need to be more specific and probably stricter. In jump races, I wonder if we could say you can't use the whip after the last obstacle. We'd still have a first, second and third in every race, but they would have to be ridden home with hands and heels.”

I hadn’t considered the distraction argument in that a horse may look around before jumping a fence and it would be dangerous not to bring them to attention using a whip. Once the horse has jumped the last, distractions are no longer dangerous. Horses can be straightened using the whip without hitting. Jockeys who can’t do this should learn as they are disadvantaged.

My view is this:

Jockeys carry whips and are allowed to wave them around without hitting the horse as much as they like. In Flat racing this would be it – all hitting banned.

In National Hunt racing:

Jockeys can strike a horse a maximum of 3 times (or X times – to be decided by jockeys and regulators as this is a safety issue) between each obstacle. Once the last fence is jumped hitting is banned. Any breach of these rules, which would be simple to see, would result in disqualification for the horse and it would be placed last.

My reservations surround what Nicky Henderson has to say: “The 'hands and heels’ series for young riders has been a success, but I’ve watched a couple lately and it’s noticeable how difficult it is to ride a horse for a long way without that extra bit of persuasion.” 

The last thing we want is horses stopping because they can’t be bothered, especially in races like the Ascot Gold Cup or Eider Chase. Clare Balding says her view changed after seeing Ruby Walsh drop his whip on Big Buck’s and still win. I am far less optimistic because Big Buck’s is genuine and I have the picture in my mind of a jockey riding away on a horse chewing the grass like you see at the starting stalls. But I think my rules would, as John Francome has maintained banning the whip would do, increase jockeyship. They would require jockeys on horses who do nothing in front to ride accordingly and finish later. This in itself would require jockeys to know their horses better, either by riding them out or by being prepared better. Tactics would come to the fore and jockeys who put in more effort will be rewarded. We would, no doubt, see more of Paul Carberry’s ‘Harchibald’ rides.

In addition my rule would allow for smacking when horses are distracted in jump races. This tends to happen most by the stables, which inconveniently means jockeys give their horses a smack when they are passing the grandstands first time round. If this was down the back straight it wouldn’t be a problem.

However, the main point of the rule would be to effectively remove hitting with the whip from finishes, where close-up slow-motion action replays are used on TV. People would hardly notice the whips absence, because no doubt the jockey will be waving it past the horse’s face, but there would be no smacks or cries of cruelty.

Over at the excellent Steeplechase blog, which has a comprehensive review of all opinions, Joe McNally rightly says: “Out of sight is out of mind. Unless exposed to excessive use of the whip in graphic fashion, the public have no detail on which to make a subjective judgement. Jason Maguire, unwittingly, opened Pandora’s box.”

It's a very tricky subject. I can understand how pathetic this reason is to change a rule when there isn’t really any welfare issue but for the reasons outlined above I believe it is a necessary change and would take racing forward.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far!

My next blogpost will explain, in briefer fashion, how the implementation of any such rule would work. I believe very strongly that the way to go about this is through organised incremental trials followed by feedback, adjustment and then a full rollout and not Towcester’s suggestion of one track going it alone from this October. A major issue in all this would be what I mentioned in ‘Gordon’s Global Lesson’ – namely, how would the international racing community react? Are their rules already different to ours? I somehow doubt that Point to Points would embrace the changes as they relish not seeming to be in the 21^st Century but as they produce many future jockeys they are interesting. And I wonder what the implications would be for getting horses into starting stalls.

Please write your comments below.

Kids, Kids, Kids. Think of the children.

Today is one of racing’s showcase days. This Bank Holiday Monday there are 10 meetings in Britain and Ireland and many more Point-to-Points. 

From my experience, there is a higher proportion of children at Point-to-Points than at proper racecourses. Obvious reasons include easier picnics, more relaxed and less hostile environments. I’ve never quite understood how ‘proper racing’ has failed to have a stall at every Point-to-Point explaining the sport to children there. The key thing about these children is that most are already in love with horses, are comfortable with welfare issues, but have never yet heard of Richard Johnson or listened to a Simon Holt commentary on Channel 4. They could tell you who is winning at Badminton this week though. Flog offers and cheaper tickets to racecourses too while you’re at it too and attract families who’ve only experienced a Tote in a tent or a toilet in a ditch at the races. 

Lastly, why the hell is there no racing on Good Friday? And why are there as many top races on a Thursday as a Sunday (Peterbrough Chase, Haldon Gold Cup, Craven I’m looking at you)? The people who attend/watch these meeting are unemployed, work in the industry or have taken a day off work. Kids can’t take the day off school. Take a lead from the Irish, who are good at this: Put these meetings on a Sunday, double attendances and get families along.  

Welfare and the Whip

Let’s make this clear. The reason racing is in the dock at this moment in time is that Aintree put a tarpaulin over Ornais clearly showing his deceased frame, the BBC happened to have a camera angle showing two dead horses and a director who chose to repeatedly show the pictures. Broadcasters have claimed that they’ve received more messages complaining about the use of the whip than dead horses but the welfare issue stirred up by the national press is about horses being ‘raced to death’. When I went out on the evening of the Grand National a female friend asked me if I watched the race but said he and her Dad had been saddened and shocked to see that horses had died. My response was that if I had my way the most-watched race in Britain would be the Cheltenham Gold Cup and didn’t really like seeing the most dangerous race being the face of the sport. But there’s nothing we can do about it. I declined to mention that horses had died in most previous Grand Nationals but that she’d failed to notice. I’ll blog in future on other welfare issues including the ground (which I consider vital for not just the obvious reasons), fences, hurdles and the like. Now the hot topic is the whip due to an announcement by Towcester Racecourse that they want to ban it from October.  The announcement was made in such a way which exposed racing’s overstretched, under-resourced and uncoordinated communications operation. I know it was Good Friday but this tweet from the BHA Head of Comms says it all really.

My stance is like most in racing. Beating horses sounds completely wrong yet the whip isn’t cruel anymore in terms of the damage it does by smacking. It is padded enough, and horses are strong enough, for it not to do harm. The RSPCA agrees (let’s not mention what the letter ‘R’ stand for in their name or whether that has anything to do with their stance). Those who oppose the whip recognise this but say it is an issue of perception by the public.

However, I think the storm over Jason Maguire on Ballabriggs was never fully that he was hurting the horse with each hit but rather that he was trying to force a horse tired, dehydrated and with no energy left to go faster when if jockeys really had the interest of the horse at heart he would have stopped a fence before and jumped off rather than smack it to the line. I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic but imagine what state the sport would be in had Ballabriggs collapsed and died. The cause would be identified as what Maguire was trying to do in the first place (win a tough race in improper conditions) rather than how that was gone about (using the whip). The fact that racing does what it does was superbly defended by Alastair Down in the Racing Post and I can’t put it better.

In the next week I’m planning to post more on this issue:

When someone says: ‘People think it’s cruel so we should ban the whip to attract more people’ it’s tempting to reply: ‘Well sod them for being ignorant, we don’t want them anyway.’ I’ll try and offer opinion on both parts of this debate – whether it puts people off and whether we should be trying to attract these people anyway.

With some relevance to my latest post on globalisation, I will explore how practical it would be to ban the whip in Britain. I’m no horseman so cannot really give confident views on what races would be like without a whip or whether, as Dave Yates argues, the spectacle of horses, particularly on the flat, running their fastest and the best winning, would be lost; but I’ll consider it based on quotes from people who are. There’s a spectrum ranging from keeping the status quo to banning the whip entirely with some quite fanciful options in between. When I get time I’ll go over them.

Racing has welfare considerations at its core. Making the public believe this is essential to taking racing forward.

Happy Easter!

Gordon's Global Lesson

In February this year, Gordon Brown spoke in the Exam Schools at Oxford. I went with a fellow British PPEist and an American friend. Sat at the back we agreed to play a kind of ‘speech bingo’ to decide who would buy the drinks on the way back. We each picked a word. The one Brown said the most would win. I went for “global”, Mr UK went for “economy” and our yank couldn’t decide as he didn’t know Gordon that well. So we gave him the trump card – if the words: “sorry,” or “Tony Blair,” were mentioned he would automatically win.

Ten minutes in it was game over and us Brits were a beer each down. “Tony” had made his way into the lecture. But were this to have been decided by a pure First-Past-The-Post system, used at General Elections and the Grand National, the word “global” would have secured a safe seat. “Global problems require global solutions and global frameworks and global institutions...” The gist was that countries should no longer compete against each other or act unilaterally but instead work together in a worldly forum in which everyone would benefit eventually. Which brings me to the inaugural British Champions Series all set to begin on Saturday with the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket.

The Champions Series is what it says it is – ‘British’. Yet the horses in it can come from all over the world, even just for the final day of this 35 race extravaganza. Many will indeed do so and the record £3million prize-money could well be £3million out of the British economy, divided up between Japanese stable staff and Australian owners. The total series’ offering is £13million, which is more likely to be for John Magnier, Ryan Moore, Sir Michael Stoute and co than Bob Baffert. Why is this, you may ask? Well, whilst it is true that Britain stages a large proportion of top-class international races, most trainers are chasing the big money around the globe wherever it may be. To demonstrate the point, Ouija Board, Ed Dunlop’s fantastic mare, raced exactly half of her 22 races outside of Britain. The three most valuable races she ran in, defeated, were twice in Tokyo, once in Dubai. The winners were trained by two Japanese and one British-based (an Italian, Cumani). The riders were Lemaire (a Frenchman), Dettori (British-based Italian) and Take (Japanese). Further, Lemaire and Dettori both currently ride for owners, the Aga Khan and Godolphin respectively, who demand they ride their top horses all over the world wherever they may be. The reality is that the BHA’s scheme for the elite is actually the Premier League when the managers are now focussing on the Champions League except when they have a ‘big-four’ clash at home to tend to.

This is not the BHA’s fault. Their mission is to drive up British racing amongst the home population and providing a clearer narrative seems to be a good start. There have also been initiatives such as the Global Sprint Challenge, which catches the imagination of the public for two days in June and one in July and then disappears from the British consciousness. The King Stand and Golden Jubilee Stakes at Ascot have proven that a bit of global communication reaps benefits in terms of a clearly larger international feel to races providing for a better spectacle for fans as a result. People tune in to watch Balding and Cattermole telling the tale of Takeover Target. Carl O’Callaghan’s ‘Irishman abroad’ enthusiasm makes the feature pages of newspapers outside the racing section. It goes largely unnoticed as its primary audience is trainers but the Global Sprint Challenge is a rip-roaring success. It is also flexible and its promoters, representatives from six countries including Ascot and Newmarket officials, met in Hong Kong before Christmas to discuss how to improve it. Whilst not in the slightest marketing itself to the British public, the Global Sprint Challenge has done more to ignite interest in flat racing over its five-year existence than any other scheme. People know that the sprinters they are watching at Royal Ascot and in the July Cup are genuinely the best in the world. Can they say the same about the Lockinge or the King George?

Let’s ask a question I presume not many have done when looking for guidance: What would Gordon do? I’d take a guess that he would not recommend some sort of worldwide racing authority that can impose rules on others like Fifa does to UEFA in football or the EU does to the UK. He would only need to look across the channel to see that the French like their steward’s inquiries more than we do and that harmonising every law in the book would cause unnecessary carnage. I think he’d go for the G8 or G20 option. Like the Global Sprint Challenge, a forum of representatives from different nations discussing how to integrate and adjust their racing schedules, could form a truly elite series where the best take on the best. Not just for sprinters but for all categories of flat horse. After some years bedding in they will see the fruits of their co-operation in increased public interest and a narrative understandable to all. For once the Champions Stakes winner would be a real champion. Once the product is there and working, the best marketing brains from Japan, America and Britain, together, could develop and sell a global brand to audiences, TV companies and sponsors alike.

There was a time once when Brough Scott introduced Channel 4 audiences to prime-time Breeders’ Cup action from Gulfstream Park, Florida. I know because he’s on this youtube video for half a second at the end (after the best TV theme tune ever). Never in my living memory has a British broadcaster come close to doing this again. However much unrest there is in Bahrain, on the other hand, the BBC would fly Jake Humphrey out there at a flash if there was even the slightest glimpse of Formula One. It’s an attractive spectacle simply because the contenders at the very top of their sport. It’s a global event with a global brand and a global framework to organise it. 

So the British Champions Series starts this Saturday and good luck to it. It’s a change for the better. But it will never really live up to its name.

Welcome!

A warm welcome to Taking Racing Forward – a blog on horseracing, through the eyes of a University student and lifelong fan. 

The Economist magazine has the mission statement: 'First published in September 1843 to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress".'

Blogging here in 2011, with a greater dose of relaxation and naivety, I’d like to embrace this psychology in regard to the ‘Sport of Kings’.

There are some great gambling and news sites on the web but this is something different – somewhere where I want to write my thoughts about horseracing and its future development as a sport not just a betting product.

I have an open mind to new ideas but write with the view that horseracing is one of the most unpredictable sports in the world and this makes it such a special spectator sport. Controversial, racing has issues it must deal with in an intelligent, progressive way which ensures it survives in a healthy state for generations to come, which it is capable of. However, if it were to look itself in the mirror it would mostly see well-meaning, but backward, traditionalists desperate to hold on to things due to fear of change. I don’t believe in change if it doesn’t improve things. But racing must move forwards. 

Please comment on my posts if you agree or disagree with what they say as long as you keep it pleasant!

Thank you.