Was the winner of the Arc not from Germany?

oh he was pre booked great timing never heard ascot mentioned once

As i posted earlier arklearkle within a week it'll be a level playing field with the Fast-pic boys. It's getting obvious now whatever is in front going inside the final furlong has an advantage, to back it you have 2 things running for you. 1) You can see if it's tiring or not and 2 you know no matter how much the 2nd(or whatever is finishing fast) responds to the whip it'll have to stop after 6 whacks

hmm i wonder which trainer does well with front runners and has a jockey that seldom gets banned.....

Sincere apologies Silver you are correct. I think I am suffering from that "mental blindness" referred to earlier in the thread. It probably is because I am trying to count all the whip strikes for each and every horse in each race. It gets very difficult especially in a 16 runner field. Dont know how these poor stewards can do it. Of course they are more knowledgeable and intelligent than the rest of us. I have told my wife not to worry if she hears me counting and screaming in my sleep. Perhaps those people who watch airplanes taking off and landing and do things like keeping track of Eddie Stobert trucks could take up the counting also. It could help older people to keep their minds active and they could phone their figures into the stewards if they notice any criminal committing an offence.

Feck it certainly would be simple but would also become irrelevant as there would be no one watching and no one betting on it.

You are standing in line at the bank and you are daydreaming when it's your turn to go to the counter. You are wearing a vest (do people still wear them?) a shirt, jumper and jacket as it's getting a bit nippy now. When you don't move then the person behind you pushes you in the back and tells you it's your turn and then you "awake" from your dream and make your way up to the counter.

You move because you feel the push and know what it is intended to do and so you still react to it anyway but because of the amount of clothing you have, you don't feel any pain from it and it's much the same with the whip on the horses. They have thicker skin than humans anyway and have a coat too and the whips have also been modified now so whilst they still feel them enough to know to react to them, they don't really feel pain from them.

5.10 leicester another joke race.

Obviously the stewards are going to have their work cut out reviewing big handicaps for whip offences.  I think the BHA should start up a premium rate line where tv viewers could phone in with jockeys they think have broken the rules.  The first to pick a correctly offending jockey would win a substantial cash prize.  It could be called Shop-a-jock or the Grassline.  We could have Chapman saying "Boom!" followed by the lucky winners name.  Let's bring the fun back to racing!

Another solution would be to replace the big, heavy handed, hard hitting whip boys with mini me's. Midget jockeys with a top weight of 5 stone. Surly they could not complain then?

Kieren Fox will not appeal against first whip ban under the new rules

• Jockey says penalty out of all proportion to offence
• BHA defends introducing changes in Champions Day week


Chris Cook
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 Oct

Kieren Fox, the first jockey to be punished under the newly toughened whip rules, will not appeal against the 15-day ban meted out to him at Salisbury on Monday. Nevertheless, Fox feels his penalty is out of all proportion to the offence.


"I've broken the rule that they've put down but the rules are harsh," he said by telephone, reflecting on a race in which he hit his mount, Orthodox Lad, 11 times, four more than is now allowed in any Flat race. "If you break them, then you get what you get but starting at five days is a bit unfair.


"My horse was a maiden, he's going to the sales, it's really important to the owner that he wins and it [the whip] did make a difference. I've not cut him in half, I've not been overly hard on him. I don't think people in racing are telling the public what the new padded stick is really like, or how thick a horse's skin is. It's just encouragement. He runs for a smack, this horse. He doesn't even know he's had a race."


Fox was especially riled by suggestions in news reports that his performance on Orthodox Lad might have been found in breach under the old whip rules. "I wouldn't have been, because my understanding was that, if you hit it 12 times, you got a caution and from 13 you started getting days," he said.


"I was counting from the two pole but when I got to the furlong pole with a horse either side of me and all trying to win, that's when the adrenaline takes over. I was aware of what I was doing but not the number of times. I'm just trying to make a living and feed my children.


"The owners are paying an awful lot of money to have these horses in training. Had I not hit the horse 11 times, I don't think he would have won.


"But I've got to take it on the chin. I'm the first, with Richard Hughes [given a five-day ban after the same race], to break the rule but I definitely ain't going to be the last. There'll be plenty more to come."


Fox echoed the comments of other jockeys who have, in recent days, objected to the fact that whip rule breaches now result in forfeiture of the riding fee and any prize money won by the offending rider. "Fair enough, taking your prize money away but they shouldn't take your riding fee away because you've earned that," he said.


The British Horseracing Authority has defended its decision to introduce the new rules in the same week as the revamped Champions Day, which is supposed to broaden the sport's appeal. Advance publicity of the £3m raceday at Ascot has been marginalised by continuing coverage of the new rules, which have proved much more controversial than those in power must have hoped.


For the third day in succession, this morning's Racing Post filled its first three pages with stories about the whip rules. Frankie Dettori and Tony McCoy, quoted by the BHA as supporting the new rules when they were initially published a fortnight ago, have expressed serious reservations since their introduction.


"We considered all sorts of things as to when to launch the rules and when to introduce them," said the BHA's Paul Struthers. "We have always said that we would have the review completed by October.


"These things can get out and the longer we left it after making the decision, the greater the chances of it leaking out. That happened with the Grand National review, for example, and it's far from ideal because only bits of it come out that way and it can be very, very damaging. So we wanted to act as quickly as possible.


"So then you look at when to implement it. If we'd waited until after Champions Day, personally I think it's naive to believe the headlines about Saturday would just be about the racing. If you had a winning jockey breaking the old whip rules, the story would have been what he would have got under the new rules, and then we could have been accused of being cynical and of sitting on it for PR reasons.


"There's rarely a low-key Saturday and we felt, not just those involved in the review but the BHA as a whole and the BHA board, that if these are to be the new rules and that they're in the best interests of racing, then why delay implementing them?"


Struthers reported his impression of an "even split" within the industry between "those who think we've gone way too far and ruined the sport, those who think we've not gone far enough and should be banning the whip or disqualifying people, and the people in the middle who think we've got the balance about right."