Whip the bugger!

There's been a hell of a furore over the last week or so after new rules were introduced for how jockeys use the whip.

Since 10th October, the amount of times a jockey's whip can be used during a race will be limitted to seven times in Flat races and eight in races over jumps. A maximum of five strokes can be administered in the last furlong or from the final obstacle.

Now my old dad use to like a bit of a flutter on the horse racing on a Saturday afternoon. There he was with 50p Yankee glued to the tellie. I can still picture the cries of "Whip the bugger!" as his horse came down the final furlong...

I'm not an advocate of cruelty to animals, but it seems to me that there is a simple issue here : either you allow jockeys to whip their mounts or you don't. Simples! And, of course, there is already an existing rule which allows jockeys to be fined for 'excessive use of the whip' so what's the problem?

Well, it's simple really : On one side of the coin are the jockeys who want to be able to gee up their geegee with a bit of not-so-gentle persuasion, and on the other side are the animal rights loonies who want an outright ban. So naturally in an effort to please everybody, we have inevitably ended up with an unworkable compromise that pleases nobody. How very British.

Limiiting the number of times you can strike the horse seems reasonable enough until you try to figure out exactly how this is going to be enforced. Are we going to have a scrutineer on the course with a pair of binoculars following an individual horse and counting the strokes of the whip because, frankly, I can't see exactly how that is going to work in practice. And if not that, then what?

So now the jockeys are threatening to go on strike until this is all sorted out. Frankly, I can't say I blame them. It's all completely unworkable.

And what about all those little old men in front of their tellies shouting 'Whip the bugger!"?...