THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - PUTTING THE STRADBROKE DAY FALLOUT INTO PERSPECTIVE

By Graham Potter | Sunday, June 19, 2016

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

There is plenty of debate coming out in the wash following Stradbroke day, as there was always going to be given it was the first meeting in two years at the Eagle Farm venue on a brand new racing surface.

We can debate race-times, the unusually large gaps between winners and the trailing opposition ... and even the decision to water the track ... as much as we like.

To what end?

You can’t go back and change anything. Races were won and lost and, at the end of the day, the record books will highlight the winners of 2016 just as they do all of those who saluted down the years.

None of those record book entries mention adverse conditions, hard luck stories or identify those who just got plain lucky.

Whether things fall into place, or whether you make your own luck, the bottom line in racing is that it is all about winners, however they achieve that mark ... and to focus on the supposed, implied, somehow unfair treatment of the strung out losers instead of applauding the winners is a misguided approach to the day’s outcome.

And for serious punters, if you don’t like the form out of the day, draw a line through it. It’s not like you’ve never done that before.

Connections accepted to race. They took their chances. Some prevailed better than others.

What’s new?

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I am not in favour of the new whip rule. I don’t think it should be in the rule book.

Pre the radical revolution ... the pampering to public perception phase of racing management ... stewards always had the right to take action against riders who made excessive or unnecessary use of the whip.

That’s how it should have stayed.

The problem, as the rule stands now, is determining fair play in terms of results.

It has been well documented on HRO that it is nigh on impossible to assess how much whip use helps (or in fact hinders) a horse in a race finish ... hence the margins involved where a breach does occur are difficult to overturn on the basis of any whip rule protest.

Having said that, while the current whip rule is in play, brazen abuse of the rule needs to be dealt with in entirely new way because fines are clearly inadequate.

Ten jockeys were fined a combined total of $5950 on Stradbroke day. A couple of those jockeys used their whip eleven and twelve times prior to the 100m mark, when only five strikes are permitted.

One or two hits over ... the jockey can always argue a case of ‘misjudgement’.

Double the amount allowed?

By all means stewards should lighten their pockets but that sort of transgression should also attract a mandatory, heavy suspension for jockeys involved ... something like three months.

Payment of fines is a grey area. With a suspension only the jockey can do the time.

That punishment might at least help reach the stated purpose of curtailing whip use.

If it is all about perception, let’s get back to a perception that every horse had its chance of winning the race and that no horse was compromised by a rival’s riders ‘unfair’ use of the whip.

Better still. Let’s drop the whip rule altogether and let’s go racing!

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