Remounting banned

Ahhh...but the horse may have been injured at any of the previous hurdles....and you would expect the jock to spot that (if it was a serious injury) and pull the horse up. So lets just leave it the jock....it hardly ever happens therefore i dont think we need the rule. ;)
 
The jockey certainly should spot an injury picked up whilst running. It is different when the horse has just stood up and the jockey has to worry about getting a bollocking from connections for not getting back on. This rule takes that pressure off them.
 
OTB said:
My point is we dont need the rule, it would appear to serve no purpose. If a horse is 10l clear coming to the 2nd last hurdle....he stumbles and the jock is thrown out...but he doesn't lose the horse....why should he not jump back on? The horse could have stumbled at every other hurdle in the race and he's not told to get off is he? Jockey's are not thugs and should be allowed the do the job owners pay them to do.
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But by the time the jockey has gathered up the horse/himself, the horses who were 10 lengths behind won't be and will either be approaching at speed a hurdle, or already trying to jump it. Why should they have to contend with a jockey trying to remount in front of them?
 
G-G said:
But by the time the jockey has gathered up the horse/himself, the horses who were 10 lengths behind won't be and will either be approaching at speed a hurdle, or already trying to jump it. Why should they have to contend with a jockey trying to remount in front of them?
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I don't really see that as an issue. It hasn't been in the past.
 
I agree with the rule and Shadow Leader has summed it up perfectly. Jockeys are no more aware of any internal damage to a horse, whether it's sustained a hairline fracture which will open up during further riding (but which will show up the next day with a little heat and swelling in the affected leg), or even whether they themselves have sustained an internal or head injury. Riders can clamber back on feeling a bit sore, and, not being either vets or doctors, not realise that they're on the way to a serious internal rupture, etc.

Never mind KAUTO STAR - Ruby's climbed back on lesser mortals for a lift back to the stables, rather than walk the horse back. I mention NO NEED FOR ALARM, a huge mare of Paul Nicholls, who fell with Ruby twice at Plumpton. On one occasion, her lass retrieved her from me, holding her after she'd crashed through the rails at the Railway Entrance, no doubt spying the big gates as the way home. On the other, Ruby remounted her and cantered her back. She was lame next day. Was she going lame at the time, did cantering back make her condition worse? Who knows - but certainly Ruby didn't.

Vets and doctors are the only people to determine whether a horse or rider is fit for further work. Riders, of varying abilities and degrees of horse knowledge, aren't.

Horses who decant their riders as they're on the way to post or at the stalls aren't affected by the remount rule. It's horses who crash during actual racing (i.e. at racing pace).

There'll be mutterings into their beards by reactionaries who'll cite Sir Rupert Raddlestone-Popinjay riding his chaser to glory after three falls and remounts in a chase in 1923, I'm sure, but these are modern times where, one hopes, modern thinking is gradually inching its way into racing's psyche. All of racing - not just the more innovative Flat, but grizzled old jumps, too.
 
SO.....if a horse stumbles after a fence should a jockey pull him up? As he has no idea if the horse has sustained an injury?? All i'm saying is a fall doesn't always mean an injury... and we dont need yet another rule. Oh and to say the FLAT is innovative.....that wont help your case!
 
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OTB, you're being disingenuous. The rule is about REMOUNTING, which means that a jockey has fallen off during racing. It's not about whether a horse has fly-bucked after the start, veered all over the course, barged, bumped or biffed anyone or had it done to them. I said that if a horse had stumbled and unseated his rider, the jockey shouldn't remount as much for his own sake as the horse's. This rule is not just about the horse's welfare, it's also about the jockey's - something you, Cantoris and pro-remounters seem quite happy to waft aside in your will to see your horse finish the race. Perhaps you'd be very happy for your unseated jockey to get back on your nag, without either him or you being aware that the knock he had on his head has caused concussion? Would you like a dazed jockey presenting your horse at the open ditch? Presumably you don't give a flying fart, and many young jockeys would feel pressured by the attitudes of owners like you to remount, come what may. I think you're demonstrating a curiously callous attitude to your riders, let alone your horses.

Your response to innovation is pretty much what I'd expect from old-fart reactionaries, though - no surprise there!
 
A pointless decision. More horses get injured whilst running loose than they do than after being remounted. That is what should be banned.
 
You'll send a stern letter to all horses in training, telling them not to get loose, will you? That should do the trick.
 
It was meant to be a smart reply, hence the smiley. Perhaps sense of humour failure elsewhere?! :)
 
No, not at all - I personally think writing to them would work, although probably only with those rated over 85, the lower classes being a bit thick.

Let's be honest, this rule is just the latest in a series of evolvements in racing. Remember how quite a few people fell to the floor, frothing at the mouth, when body protectors were made mandatory for jockeys and work riders? Loads of stuff about how they'd get in the way, jockeys wouldn't be able to whup their horses enough, they'd probably break more bones than they'd protect in a fall, world without end. And yet the sky didn't fall, or the Earth fail to turn on its axis. This, too, shall pass...
 
My numbers might well be out, but hopefully the gist will come across.

There is a population of - what? - around 8000 or so National Hunt horses in training?

Let's say that, on average, each horse runs five times in a season.

So that's something in the order of 40,000 or so runs over obstacles in a season.

Based on the statistics quoted here, this rule has been brought in - with trumpets blaring, and ticker-tape scattered - to prevent something which happens about once in every five thousand runs. It is typical of the BHA that the remounting non-issue, is deemed to be something of import......at the expense of things which are actually meaningful, and might help move the sport forward.

This new rule is designed only to pander to chattering-class wankers, and is left-wing, moist-handshakery of the highest order. It will achieve the square root of the amount of testicles Hitler possessed, minus the first positive integer.
 
Did we ever find out if delibrately passing your whip to another jockey in the hustle of a national hunt race got banned? think it happend sometime last year, and John Francome said it was just a good gesture at the time which I thought was a bit of a strange concept. That said i've never ridden professionally so probably don't know what i'm talking about.
Stop national hunt jockeys from colluding with each other to negotiate bleedin races, don't stop them from actually trying their hardest to win a race i.e remounting FFS.

Defeats the object.
 
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At least now everyone will know where they stand, and owners or trainers won't get arsey with jockeys either way. Years ago horses were remounted almost automatically - which resulted in some fine old tales! - but horses are both speedier and more fragile now and races are run at a more competitve pace; ansd we are all a lot more conscious of horse welfare and of the public/PR face of racing.

The Kauto incident made this inevitable I think.
 
It's interesting to note the various reactions to this rule. Here, it appears that the people who have commented are roughly split down the middle (if anything erring on the side of rubbishing the rule), on TRF (a forum which does tend to have more than it's fair share of fluffy bunnies, granted!!! :D ) people are more or less in favour, with a few dissenters, and on a pointing to pointing forum I go on (where most of the members are horsemen) virtually everyone thinks it is a good idea. It seems to me that the only people who think the rule is crap are looking at it almost entirely from a punting point of view, or saying "don't be daft, a jockey wouldn't remount an injured horse"; conveniently ignoring that the most perceptive jockey in the world cannot say with any certainty in the seconds and minutes immediately following a fall whether or not the horse is harbouring an injury due to the amount of adrenaline coursing through the system, which can and will mask pain.

To steal one of the posts on the point to point forum, one poster points out that there is an old saying : There are fools, damn fools, and people who remount in steeplechases.
 
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To be fair, I don't personally have any issues with the banning of re-mounting.

However, I see it as very much a non-issue, for the reasons described above. It simply doesn't happen often enough for it to be a primary concern of the BHA, when they face a multitude of other issues which are of much greater import.

The fact that this does appear to be a primary issue, would indicate that the BHA are prepared to place pandering to the hand-wringers, ahead of implementing meaningful changes which would actually improve the game and move it forward.

My criticism is more about the BHA management, and their apparent misplaced priorities, than anything directly connected with the remounting (non) issue.
 
Shadow Leader said:
It seems to me that the only people who think the rule is crap are looking at it almost entirely from a punting point of view, or saying "don't be daft, a jockey wouldn't remount an injured horse";
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And don't forget the owners!! I think it's a very good rule which just requires the one small insertion re the last fence.
 
Grasshopper said:
This new rule is designed only to pander to chattering-class wankers, and is left-wing, moist-handshakery of the highest order. It will achieve the square root of the amount of testicles Hitler possessed, minus the first positive integer.
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Well said :lol:
 
That was always my point....is such a non-event that there is no need for the rule. Its the BHA bending over and taking it up the arse yet again....
 
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