THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN: GIVING THE ‘WHIP RULE ISSUE’ A REAL FLOGGING! WHERE TO NOW?

By Graham Potter | Friday, September 11, 2020

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the column these articles are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily.

The huge disconnect between some racing industry administrators themselves and, more importantly, between some racing administrators and racing industry participants was epitomised this week by Racing Victoria’s unilateral action in publically announcing their intent to push towards ultimately outlawing whip use on horses in races other than for safety purposes.

Amongst other things, the RV media release stated, ‘If national consensus on an amendment to the Australian Rules of Racing cannot be reached, RV will explore alternative approaches to achieve meaningful progress on whip reform.’

In other words, they are prepared to go it alone … just as they did when they blindsided the likes of the Jockeys Association without giving them the courtesy of adequate notice that they were going public with their agenda.

Going public, two months before a scheduled November Racing Australia board meeting where the matter could be debated in-house, was clearly not taken on a whim … but rather, it can be argued, it seemed to embrace a strategy designed to rally public opinion behind their cause to try and create pressure on the Australian Racing Board to capitulate to their demands.

The RV media release clearly prods that bear ... interestingly, just we move into feature Spring Carnival racing ... supposedly speaking on behalf of the public when it states in that same media release that, ‘it is clear that their ongoing use is becoming less compatible with community expectations each year.’

Two important points: One, the whip rule is a very emotive issue which actually involves both horse and jockey welfare. As such, it has to have a priority listing in terms of review but, whatever the ultimate outcome, the people who should have the most say are the jockeys who actually ride these horses under testing race conditions. Desk jockey’s views should not apply.

Two: Racing is a competitive sport built on the combination of the inherent ability of the individual horses and the respective skills of the individual jockeys. A very important part of the integrity of the sport is that everything is done to try and ensure that both horse and jockey can perform to their full potential … and the whip, used within proper animal welfare guidelines, is an acceptable part of facilitating that competitive outcome.

Take that option away and racing itself would then be under the whip to stay alive.

The bottom line is that pandering to perception, that is allowing the views of people with little to no understanding of what takes place out on the track to shape the destiny of the industry is, quite simply, as illogical as it would be damaging to the industry as a whole and, by default, to the thousands and thousands of people whose income is derived from working within the industry.

Yes, all racegoers would want to come up with a solution to the whip rule problem that would satisfy both the essential needs of the racing set-up as well as placate the concerns of the community.

But that discussion between racing and the community has to be two-way street. To be effective, it has to be a genuine, joint effort to reach a common goal.

That definition would eliminate from that forum the radical, ignorant assaults on its practises that racing has had to put up with in recent years from ‘animal activists’ as racing cannot be reasonably expected to negotiate with those who only have the absolute end of racing in their sights.

At the moment, things are all over the place.

Racing authorities are not on the same platform and all we ever hear from the community comes from the radical fringe … so, don’t expect a solution anytime soon.

In that context, Racing Victoria’s arguably ill-advised play this week is hardly likely to make things any better … which only goes to show how far we have to go before a peaceful solution to this on-going matter can be reached!

Racing Victoria's CEO Giles Thompson put forward these views in a discussion on the After The Last program on Racing.com

The view we have is that ultimately the whip use should be prohibited except for the use of safety purposes. It would still be carried by jockeys … but can only be used for safety purposes, not for encouragement. That is something we haven't put a timeline on and it is not imminent. In the coming months we think that will be an important discussion to have with participants to work out how we can move to that position and we are looking forward to have a full consultation with participants during that period.

What we are looking at (now) is a more immediate change to the whip rule at it stands at the moment. The whip rule in our view in Australia is not fit for purpose. It is no longer relevant and being accepted by the community … not just in the broader community, or a fringe minority, but the racing community as well. We have seen other jurisdictions around the world move to a more contemporary rule … and that is what we would like to see … to a rule which has a fixed number of strikes (per race). In our case we believe between five and eight is the right number and we think Racing Australia should consider that as soon as it possibly can, to move to a world standard in whip rules.

The debate has been around for good year and we are trying to move that debate forward by taking an interim step, which is looking at getting our whip rule to be aligned to the world’s best practice. This is not a whip rule that we are proposing that is alien to racing. Every major Western racing jurisdiction currently has a whip rule in line to what we are proposing. The only two that don’t, are us and New Zealand. So, what we want to do is bring the Australian whip rule up to global standards.

The whip isn’t currently a welfare issue, I want to make that clear. It is a padded whip, but it is about perception as well. It’s about how the community perceives racing and how it perceives how we act within racing. It’s about responding to what our generation wants and what future generations will want.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that (the ultimate aim to prohibited whip use except for the use of safety purposes) this is a straight forward or easy transition to go through which is why we want to focus right now on the short term, getting the current rule changed to that world standard. Then we can have over the years and months ahead talk about the bigger picture and the long term outlook for the whip in racing.