New Whip Rules

I'm with you Grey. With an example like that, it seems clear to me that overuse of the whip has been a deciding factor in the horse improving it's placing. Rather similar to Aidan Coleman's use of the whip in the Grand Sefton when holding off Lennel by a neck.
 
Grey said:
The Lanzarote highlighted another anomaly in the whip rules. Leaving aside the question whether the rules make sense in the first place, it seems crazy that Swincombe Flame is allowed to keep a race it only won because its jockey broke the rules. Why, apart from Will Kennedy, should the connections and backers of the second be the ones to lose out?
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I backed the second and with multiples etc it cost me quite a few quid but I believe that to demote the winner would be rough justice. If we get to this stage things will get farcical. Demotion for this won't work.
 
"The sport's biggest crisis in years"... oh, come onnn! Every time there's a bit of a drama, it's the biggest crisis to hit the sport since the last biggest crisis to hit the sport. The sport may be in crisis, but it isn't because of someone smacking a horse over his ability to count. Bent jockeys, bent exchange deals, bent trainers, gambling yards that don't run a straight race twice, prize money at farcical levels - Lysaght must be short of ammo this week.

I think we've argued the pros and cons of demoting winners before, haven't we? It will be the only thing that will work, in fact. Can you imagine winning a really classy race because you whacked the horse 10 times, only to see the animal demoted to 2nd for the records book of eternity, and your name blemished as the jockey who cost his employers £500,000 and potential sire fees later on? Guess how many top rides you'd get after that? It's not until the BHA puts its teeth back in that jocks will seriously take any notice. And anyone who thinks they are really going to lose their prize percentage? Yeah, right.
 
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Grey said:
The Lanzarote highlighted another anomaly in the whip rules. Leaving aside the question whether the rules make sense in the first place, it seems crazy that Swincombe Flame is allowed to keep a race it only won because its jockey broke the rules. Why, apart from Will Kennedy, should the connections and backers of the second be the ones to lose out?
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It's difficult to leave aside the question whether the rules make sense or not because they don't!
The best horse won the race and fair play to connections and those who backed him. If James Best had pulled his stick through in time and got one or two more strokes in he might be being lauded as winning with a strong ride a big Saturday handicap. The only small gripe I would have with the Will Kennedy was his last stroke which landed short. Maybe a days holiday for some retraining would have been sufficient.

The exact number of strikes issue is still a nonsense.
 
krizon said:
It's not until the BHA puts its teeth back in that jocks will seriously take any notice.
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So this implies that they have not already done so? they are the laughing stock of racing worldwide!!

It will not be until the BHA employ a proper board of hands on industry professionals to assess each ride that they feel excessive use of the whip was used.... the toff pots that are in there have not got a clue!!

kk
 
Struthers appointed to jockeys association job

By Graham Green 2:01PM 24 JAN 2012
PAUL STRUTHERS, the BHA's former head of communications, is set to make a swift return to the sport after landing the job as Kevin Darley's successor as chief executive of theProfessional Jockeys Association.

Struthers' appointment was rubber-stamped at a PJA board meeting on Monday evening after he came through a selection process during which five candidates were whittled down to two who had second interviews last week.

Struthers appeared to have been made the scapegoat for the PR disaster surrounding the authority's handling of the whip issue when his departure from High Holborn was announced in mid-November. In his new role he will be addressing the argument from the other side of the fence.

( Racing Post)
 
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High farce, though, surely? Now he'll be required to front the jockeys who, having demanded to be given clear rules on how many strikes were permitted and agreed that they could indeed count to seven or eight, are now counterdemanding a change to the change in whip rules, to accommodate those who clearly can't?

In other words, he'll be required to look at undoing everything he carefully helped to put together before... you really couldn't make these larks up.
 
To be fair, he probably wasn't that involved in putting the actual rule together - that will have been the Disciplinary and Racing departments - it was more his role to communicate their conclusions to the outside world.
 
The BHA will be seething surely - particularly given the reason they got rid of Paul Struthers (IMO the only person in the BHA hierarchy who knew what he was doing) was because Paul Scotney (he who takes 4 years+ to resolve a corruption case) had lost faith in his ability to do the job.
 
But what sort of job was it, if he was just a mouthpiece, and not part of the decision-making process on any issues? You wouldn't really need to have to pay someone a decent salary to simply front whatever was decided without their own input - I assume he carried PR along with 'communications'. Why bother with a PR manager if he was never able to input his own views? Surely, though, he would've had to have been capable of crafting the presentation of the findings and rulings with the assistance of other officials? That is, not just stand up on his hindlegs and mouth off whatever came into his head? So either they all made a balls-up, or he was left out of the frame and didn't do a very good job of presenting the finished product.

Problem with some of these corruption cases, IS, is getting them passed first by the CPS. It can take briefs a good year to put together just the legitimate bones of a case and then find that the CPS won't progress it as it is due to its likelihood not to result in a prosecution. It's not as if prosecuting someone is down to the aggrieved body only - you have to involve telecoms people, the cops, briefs, the CPS and any witnesses, etc. before even finding if you've got enough to press charges. And the last case involved a number of people, each one having to be treated individually as a sole case as well as a group one. Really quite tricky - nothing as easy as bashing Colonel Mustard over the noggin with a candlestick, in the library!
 
Kri - trust me, I know through my own organisation's peripheral involvement which members of the BHA have had primary responsibility for the decision making process, and Paul Struthers was not one of them.

It's rare for a corruption case to be passed to the CPS to advise upon / take the decision whether or not to charge and on the odd occasions it does happen it will almost inevitably add delay, not least because the BHA internal investigative team work to the civil standard of proof (balance of probabilities) as opposed to the criminal standard (beyond reasonable doubt). So what might seem a strong case by "normal" BHA standards will almost always have holes when judged by the criminal standard of proof. Any case put before the CPS has to pass two distinct tests: is the prosecution in the public interest, and is there sufficient evidence to have a realistic prospect of conviction? If there are gaps in the latter it doesn't automatically mean a case will be bombed by the CPS, if the investigative authority (usually the police) say they can fill those gaps - as Kri says, with telephone records, further witness statements etc - then the reviewing lawyer will usually give them the opportunity to come up with the goods, hence further delay.
 
Fair dinkum, cobber! It seems very wrong to not include the person who's going to be responsible for announcing all of an organisation's various edicts. You'd think the BHA nabobs would want Struthers to attend so that he could truthfully and fully answer questions about how the decisions came to be framed, yadda-yadda. What does seem very positive is his reception onto the PJA by not only the jocks, but the racing media, several of whom have been referring to his plight as a 'disgraceful scapegoating', etc., etc.
 
Looks like the new man heading up the BHA is a sensible type of guy. The whip rules and penalties seem likely to revert to something close to the pre champions day scenario. At last a little sense prevails.
 
You can sympathise with the jockeys' inability to count to 8 if this is the standard of numeracy within racing:
 

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