My goodness, after reading through The Jockey Club’s Thoroughbred Safety Committee guidelines, you’d think there was something wrong with horse racing.
There’s lots of sobering material to go through, all of which has the horse’s best interest in mind. But reading through just the headings alone is mildly disturbing. Each one of the headings addresses an issue that horses have endured for the better part of, I don’t know, 100 years.
Here’s a few juicy ones:
Anabolic Steroids, Protocol for Investigating and Reporting Fatalities Occurring On-Track, Reformed Racing Medication Rules, Post-Mortem Database, National Uniform Medication Program, Recording Training Fatalities in the Equine Injury Database, Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Regulations, Safety Riding Crops, Use of Crop and Use of the Crop and Penalties for Misuse of the Crop.
I like to picture what someone 100 years from now might infer from horse racing. Like, they raced horses? And it was normal that they died. Or they used the whip crop? That seems barbaric.
It’s this latter one that was most recently addressed by The Jockey Club. The crop, whip, whatever you want to call it, should be thrown out in place of conditioning young horses without them and training young riders to find alternative ways to “encourage” their mount to run faster and straighter. If you’ve solicited the services of your local BDSM madam you might think the horse is lucky to get that kind of attention for free.
Way back on June 17, 2008, The Jockey Club put together its first recommendation on safety riding crops. It’s cute because instead of using the delete key, the author of the report merely drew lines through Section A1. Allow me to transcribe:
“No whip shall be used unless it has affixed to the end of it a looped leather popper not less than one and one quarter inches in width, and not over three inches in length, and be feathered above the popper with not less than three rows of leather feathers each feather not less than one inch in length. No whip shall exceed 31 inches in length. All whips riding crops are subject to inspection and approval by the stewards.”
So eight years after the first report, The Jockey Club released a fresher set of guidelines with more granularity into the use of the whip riding crop.
So finally, finally, in 2019 we get this and The Jockey Club must be commended for coming out strongly on this. Nobody outside of Norway — that’s right, Norway — has outright banned riding crops (Norway did it 20 years ago. Norway has horse racing?)
The riding crop may no longer be used for encouragement. It shall only be used to avoid dangerous situations to horse and rider. In races where a jockey will not be using a whip, it will be announced over the PA. Should that crop make a pop on the horse’s body, the stewards are to review the use to determine if a breach of rules took place.
For races under $100,000, a jock’s first offense comes with a minimum 14-day suspension and fined the equivalent of 50% of a jockey’s earning for that race.
For races with a total purse over $100,000, jockeys might want to consider holstering that crop. First offense is a minimum 28-day suspension and a fine of 100% of the jockey’s earnings for that race.
One presumes that races with purses exceeding $100,000 could possibly be on national television. The penalty is brutal. As it should.
I think there’s a significant chunk of horse racing fans that are conflicted about their stewardship of the game. On the one hand it can be thrilling; these animals are gorgeous, muscular, charismatic and athletic; you can gamble on them and maybe make a buck or two worth blowing at The Parting Glass.
On the left hand, these horses are subjected to physical rigors the likes of which few people or animals know; they can die, riders can die; horses get whipped, drugged, castrated, lip chained, injected, and then after they’ve plateaued they might get run through the claiming ranks until some generous soul decided to make a nice pet of this warhorse. And that’s the upside.
Point being, anything that ensures these horses don’t incur anymore undue discomfort or pain for our entertainment is a move worth celebrating.
We can lament that it took this long. Hopefully there’s a steward whose only job is to watch for the riding crop in every race and hopefully they come down hard.
This sport ran out of eyes to blacken a long time ago, so taking away the whip puts a cold steak on one of the many shiners.
Brendan O’Meara is a freelance writer and author of Six Weeks in Saratoga. He lives in Eugene, OR.
@BrendanOMeara
