Chris Cook on the Guardian site:
Radical new whip rules will face first major test on Champions Day
High-profile event in racing calendar could be a public relations disaster for the sport
Racing's capacity for chucking bricks through its own shop window may be demonstrated once more in a fortnight when new rules on whip use will be introduced just in time for the brand new Champions Day at Ascot.
With £3m in prize money and Frankel among those taking part, the event on 15 October is supposed to attract the attention of a new and broader audience but they may also witness a high-profile jockey getting the first lengthy ban under the sport's new, much tougher regime, which will begin five days before.
Now, thanks to the British Horseracing Authority, there are to be much tighter limits on how many times the whip can be used by a jockey during a race: seven in a Flat race and eight over jumps. But a strict numerical limit is a blunt tool that can hurt the wielder, as the respected Timeform organisation will argue in its forthcoming, fondly anticipated annual Chasers & Hurdlers.
"The specifying of a norm for the number of times the whip can be used has been at the root of many of the public relations disasters for racing," Timeform will say, citing "publicity given to whip suspensions for top jockeys in big races". Stewards should be examining how the whip is used, runs the argument, rather than how many times.
Is it reasonable to expect a jockey to maintain a careful count of his whip-strokes while picking his way through a packed field, around bends and over obstacles, always keeping an eye on the favourite and remembering the tactics he has been told to employ? Yet one stroke too many in a race after 10 October will trigger a five-day ban and forfeiture of his share in the prize money, as well as the riding fee.
Despite the jokes made in the stands, there is no reason to doubt the intelligence of jockeys as a class. But counting is not as easy as one might hope in the heat of a race, as evidenced by those frustrating occasions when a jockey rides out for the finish a circuit too early. It happened to Denis O'Regan at Fakenham, to Sam Twiston-Davies at Perth, to Hadden Frost at Folkestone and, on one celebrated occasion, to all 14 riders in a race at Tramore.
William Hill offered a selection of bets inspired by the new rules but will surely get no takers for the 5-2 about another rule change within 12 months. The BHA has taken 10 months of reflection to reach this new position, will not want to move again quickly and in any case has few places left to go.
If the mood for change persists, another cut in the number of strokes allowed to, say, four per race would lack credibility. The next real change open to the sport is to ban jockeys from using the whip to make their mounts run faster, though they will still need to carry it for reasons of safety.
One option that now appears to have been ruled out is disqualification for any horse whose rider breaches the whip rules. As the review suggests, that could lead to an hour-long delay in announcing the result of the Grand National, while the stewards pore over the video to see how many times the first six jockeys used their whips over the four and a half miles.
Perhaps further change will not be necessary. An opinion poll conducted as part of the review found that 57% of respondents initially felt that the whip should be banned. After they were told about the restrictions in place and how the whip is designed to avoid inflicting pain, that number dropped to 33%.
It is a finding that may confirm the suspicions of those who feel that racing has given ground too easily through fear of public opinion, clipping its own wings when it might have been defending itself. Other findings suggest there is room for the sport to express itself better; of those who said they were interested in racing 14% professed to believe that the whip was already banned.
