New whips rules in UK are a step in the right direction

I have sympathy with the stable staff and their protest at Kilbeggan on Friday evening. The walk from the stableyard to the parade ring at the Co. Westmeath venue is a solid half mile and in the current hot spell that is certainly thirsty work.

The racecourse charging them a 'discounted price' of €1.50 for a small bottle of water when you can buy two litres in LIDL for 49c tells you all you need to know about the rip off prices at the tracks, but at the same time I’m not sure the racecourse executive is where the stable staff should have directed their frustration. Surely their employers, the trainers, have a duty of care to their staff. In any other occupation if you are working off site your employer picks up the tab for all travel related expenses.

In the end the racecourse executive at Kilbeggan relented and supplied the water free of charge to the stable staff in order to get the race meeting back on track.

Irrespective of who should be looking after the welfare of the stable staff in this instance all racecourses should be encouraged to provide a free supply of tap water to all patrons with refilling points throughout the enclosures. It would cost next to nothing to implement and would send out a positive message that the racecourse experience is not just about shaking down the customers at every turn.

Later this year British horse racing will adopt new rules regarding the use of whips. For the first time this will include the potential for horses to be disqualified if their rider had used the whip excessively - 4 strokes more than the permitted threshold for a breach of the rules triggers the possibility of disqualification.

These new rules are to a large extent only paying lip service to the animal rights brigade and it’s highly unlikely that disqualifications will happen in anything but the most extreme of cases, but I welcome this as a step in the right direction.

Under the new rules the threshold for potential disqualification of the horse will only be reached should the rider exceed the current whip limit by an additional 4 strokes and even then any whip strokes that are deemed to have been for correctional purposes will be disregarded.

One would imagine that when this threshold of 11 strokes (Flat) or 12 strokes (National Hunt) has been exceeded that it will be relatively easy for a rider or their representatives to argue that at least some of the strokes were for correctional purposes. Every time a rider changes their whip from one hand to the other it could be argued it was correctional.

I presume the authorities have purposefully left enough wriggle room in the new rule to appease those traditionalists that object to the sport pandering to animal welfare groups.

It’s a pity this whip rule change has been implemented primarily on animal welfare grounds. This should have been a rule all along. I’ve always felt it is fundamentally wrong that a rider can break the rules by hitting their horse excessively to win with no threat of disqualification of the horse. I cannot think of any other sport where a clear breach of a rule has no impact on the outcome. Hopefully the Irish regulators will consider adopting a similar rule change.

Last Wednesday the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) issued their latest set of statistics relating to their Anti-doping endeavours. As always, it is nice to see the data to back up the rhetoric.

There were a couple of interesting elements to their press release which covered data relating to the first six months of 2022. Firstly, their new CEO Darragh O’Loughlin outlined the procedures in place when it comes to Out Of Competition testing. What is somewhat surprising is that the IHRB deem it necessary to keep the location of their ‘raids’ secret from their own Authorised Officers. In advance of the unannounced inspections only the team leader knows the target and “as a routine the remainder of the team attending the inspection is advised only of a meeting point for the briefing on the day and only at the briefing is the team made aware of the detail of the work for that day including the location of premises.”

I’m sure this is prudent, but you’d like to think all our regulatory staff are trustworthy in this regard, particularly those that have been issued with Warrant Cards by the Department of Food, Agriculture and the Marine (DAFM).

The other interesting element was that not a single Out Of Competition test took place in the month of June this year. This is particularly surprising as the IHRB keep banging on about how they have been ramping up this programme of testing since twelve of their staff were bestowed with Authorised officer status by DAFM in May 2021.

This year they carried out 100 Out Of Competition tests in January, upped that number to 181 in February, 200 in March, 200 in April, 199 in May, but then it dropped to zero in June.

At first I thought this might be due to June being a busy period of racing with 36 meetings scheduled for the month, but during April and May the IHRB staff were even busier as Point to Points were also taking place. The total number of meetings their staff attended in April was 52 and in May 55.

Besides that June anomaly, it’s very positive to see the IHRB keeping us informed of their activity in tackling the threat of doping within the sport. It would be equally welcome if they could do similar regarding irregular betting patterns and flopping favourites. Cheaters in this sport come in many forms other than just dopers.

Finally, It was very nice to see Jessica Harrington train her second Irish Classic winner on Saturday when Magical Lagoon landed the Oaks at the Curragh. Following on from the victory of Alpha Centauri in the Irish 1000 Guineas in 2018 she has now trained both Classic winners in her seventies which is quite remarkable.

Saturday’s race lost much of its lustre with the withdrawal on Friday of the red-hot favourite Emily Upjohn due to travel difficulties. The plane due to fly the filly to Ireland was hit with a bird strike when enroute from Edinburgh Airport and they couldn’t source a replacement plane in time. Considering it was such an important race for the filly I’m surprised they didn’t consider the ferry as an alternative.