EUREKA!

I think I may have had one of those moments – a bright light has suddenly flooded an area of darkness. I saw writing on the wall….

Consider the following:

“It is the duty of a jockey, all else being equal, to obtain the best possible placing for the horse he is riding (that principle being the basis which encourages rich people to own horses and the public to bet on them),  but the authorities limit the number of times the jockey may hit a horse with his whip because the whip is a very cruel implement.”  Does that make sense? I think so.

Next:

“It is the duty of a jockey, all else being equal, to obtain the best possible placing for the horse he is riding (that principle being the basis which encourages rich people to own horses and the public to bet on them), but the authorities limit the number of times the jockey may hit a horse, and penalises  a jockey if he exceeds that number, even though the whip doesn’t hurt the horse at all.”

Does that make sense? I think not.

It sounds like a regulation that cannot help but PREVENT a jockey from obtaining the best possible placing for the horse he is riding – frequently and for no good reason.  However that regulation is alive and kicking in British racing nowadays. It is quite unnecessary and it rubbishes ANGLO-IRISH RACING’S GREATEST CONTRIBUTION TO ANIMAL WELFARE, the development and promotion of the padded whip.

The parties involved in that development did a wonderful job. The end-product is used worldwide, and the world loves it. It is ironic, to find this masterpiece of invention treated as an instrument of torture by the current bureaucracy of one of the two racing jurisdictions which created it. 

What is the answer to this anomaly? The answer is to follow the example of the Irish. Do not penalise whip abuse on the basis of the number of strikes. Count them by all means, but do not treat them as significant evidence when assessing a jockey’s misdeeds (if any). When the padded whip is used, all it has to offer is encouragement, not pain. Therefore the number of hits is of no great importance. This is good: it allows jockeys to get on with the job of obtaining the best possible placing without having to worry about mathematics.

Good stewards don’t have to count to recognise abuse, and when they see it they deal with it with admirable severity.  Granted the sensitivity of the subject in a world in which animal welfare is important (and rightly so), that is how it should be, and that is how it would be in British Racing if this counting of hits was reduced to the level of relevant data, possibly useful, but on its own of no particular importance.

The very idea that stewarding can be done by numbers is ludicrous. The idea that jockeys should be subjected to constant interference as they go about their business, and penalised for abusing horses with an instrument that is incapable of inflicting abuse is worse than ludicrous. It is a bad scene, and it needs to be changed.

END OF TERM

The Donec Boardroom is like an emergency dressing station quite close to the front line in WW1.  We are exhausted by the intensity of the competition which our racecourses have served up since Christmas and blinded by the brilliance of some of the performances.  We imagine that quite a number of the horses feel the same way.

In that context it was refreshing to see that Sprinter Sacre only ran four times in the year 26 April 2015 to 23 April 2016 and won them all, and Carlingford Lough has had just three runs since the turn of the  year (all at the top level). He won two of them and pocketed thirty grand for finishing fourth in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.  

Scribes as well as superstars need their rest. Donec’s only remaining chore this month is Political. Politics being a pretty nasty subject, our contribution has been isolated behind the POLITICS label (as opposed to SPORT) on the first page. it is called CAMERON AND EUROPE.

Best wishes,

Donec