tony57    02 Jan 16 17:33 
I never said I prefare the French rules?..i said the French and irish don't have a 8 strike rule?

I realise that. The French are a lot quicker to DQ horses than the British are. Do we just cherry-pick which of their rules we approve of?

Watching the race, it was always likely that Scu would get up after the last. He was already staying on and closing the gap before the last fence.
The first and second put six lengths between them and the third, who jumped the last in front of the winner.

No amount of whipping would have won it for the second. We don't know whether the winner would have got up with fewer strokes. Or without any strokes at all after the last.
The horse had already responded after hits between the last two fences. He just kept hitting him after the last to try and make make sure he didn't pack it in.

Deutch had seven whacks after the last and still the horse couldn't go any faster..........

Only solution other than my first post, is either the whip goes or the rule goes

1st time poster - yes they may appeal, but only to the same body who make the rules, so how do you think any appeal will change the result?

Jockey breaks the rule .....>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Horse loses the race.

1st time poster, you argue about doing away with the whip, how would you correct a horse then?

Sorry I'm not convinced tony but you can easily settle it. Get someone you know to give you a few wacks on your bare ar5e cheeks with the whip and stick it up on you tube.

as most bookies pay double results if stewards threw a few out and connections were losing on their cut of 100 grand plus and most punters didnt ,i,d think the jockeys would learn to count pretty quickely

Jockey breaks the rule .....>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Horse loses the race.

I agree with that 11kv.

I don't think that excessive use of the whip wins many races.
You often see a horse getting a belting and still losing, but if the winner gets a belting they say he won because of the whip.

Watch Lester Piggott throw away the Arc De Triomphe on Niginsky here. He'd got it in the bag before he hit the horse. Watch the horse swerve away from the whip and throw the race away.
It's the not so mighty Lester Piggott here if you look closely.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=niginsky+in+the+acr+de+triomph&view=detail&mid=CB331DC731F6A72CC720CB331DC731F6A72CC720&FORM=VIRE1

Scudamore playing the victim after the race. Can he not count or did he not know the rules? The BHA should warn the jockeys the bans are going UP if they persist.

Interesting take on the issue from John Berry's blog

I don't really have any views on the use of the whip.  It isn't an issue at all as far as welfare goes, and if you don't like the way a jockey rides, then you don't use him.  That's it really.  I don't actually know what the whip rules are, and have no interest in finding out: they don't apply to trainers, so I don't need to know them.  The majority of times when I've watched a race and hear afterwards that one of the jockeys has received a whip ban, it's usually the case that I've watched the race without having been aware that any offence was being committed.  But what does concern me is whip rules (or, as a general principle of law-making, any rules) which aren't enforced: as soon as one writes whip rules, one is giving a message to the general public that the whip has been misused any time that the rules have been broken.  So continually to allow this message to be given is very irresponsible.  If we are going to do that (and it seems that we are) then we would be better just not to have any whip rules, because then they can't be broken.
Why this has come up now is that the King George was a rare occasion when I think that the winner would not have won had the jockey abided by the rules - and it was also a rare occasion when I watched a race and felt that the whip was not being used correctly.  (Although what disappointed me was probably not the reason for the bans which both jockeys received: I was disappointed to see them both ride into the last fence with only one hand on the reins).  Anyway, the stewards obviously felt that something was wrong, witness Paddy Brennan receiving an 11-day ban and a £4,200 fine, and Ruby Walsh receiving a two-day ban.  The former's punishment clearly suggested that he had broken the rules to a major degree - and my reading of the race (during the bulk of which he had ridden superbly) was that Cue Card would not have won had Paddy used his whip more sparingly.  Under the circumstances, it makes no sense at all that the horse was allowed to keep the race, both from the point of view of fairness and from the point of view of sending the wrong message to the man on the Clapham omnibus, ie telling him two things, namely that (a) the whip was misused and (b) it doesn't really matter.  If we are going to tell him that it doesn't really matter, then we would be better not to have brought the matter up in the first place.
Anyway, disqualification obviously presents major problems.  Firstly it would really piss punters off, and secondly it opens the door to potential integrity breaches.  At present, there are only two ways in which a jockey can guarantee that his mount won't win: throwing himself off and 'forgetting' to weigh in.  Both are problematic.  Throwing oneself off a galloping horse is very hard to do (and even harder to do without it being obvious that one has done it deliberately) while forgetting to weigh in can be very difficult if the trainer walks back into the weighing room with you to make sure that you don't forget. But if breaking the whip rules carries automatic disqualification - well, that makes guaranteeing that a horse won't win a piece of cake: all one would have to do would be something which I haven't been able to do but which I assume all jockeys have already done (ie learn what the whip rules actually say), and then break them.
So disqualification is tricky.  So here's the solution.  If a jockey breaks the whip rules, then his mount is not disqualified, but the prize money (to owner, trainer, jockey and stable staff) is withheld.  The horse is still the winner of the race, the trophy is still presented to and kept by his owner, and punters who have backed him get paid - but the prize money is not paid.  Instead, the prize money is given to the first horse across the line whose jockey hasn't broken the whip rules (or could be divided equally among every horse in the race whose jockey did not break the rules).  At present, the more valuable race, the less significant the deterrent to breaking the rules; under 'my' system, the more valuable race, the more significant the deterrent to breaking them.  You can guarantee under this plan that any jockey unwilling to ride within the rules would receive fairly short shrift from the owners, trainers and staff whose horses he/she rides.
I really can't see a downside - particularly with the prize money instead going to the teams who had obeyed the rules, because that would once in while produce a nice bonus for abiding by the rules, and would take away the grievance of having lost out financially because one's jockey had kept within the rules while another had transgressed.  There's no better way of ensuring that the rules are adhered to than making sure that owners and trainers insist that they aren't broken on their horses - and this would be the best way of bringing that about.  (And, by the way, please don't trot out the old chestnut of it being unfair for connections to suffer for their jockey's mistake - that's just a fact of life, an everyday occurrence already.  It's a given that when one is training and racing horses one receives the benefit and credit for one's employees - including one's jockeys - doing the job well, and one suffers for one's employees' mistakes.  That happens all the time anyway, both within the races and in the preparation for them).

Very interesting comment from that blog bobbyjo. I agree. Somethig else he raises which someone with race riding experience could perhaps comment on is this issue of taking a hand of the reins approaching a fence. I'd have thought the singular most important thing to do in those last few strides is to get the horse balanced in order to traverse the obstacle.

On a similar theme something I noticed which Cooper did between three out and two out is he seemed to move the reins around from one side of Don Cossack to the other rather vigorously. Hard to describe if you didn't see it but it was a bit like walking down the isle in Tesco and ramming your trolley from side to side knocking over other shoppers. I would have thought a more logical thing to do would be to drive the horse in a straight line to the fence get it balanced and try to jump cleanly. I don't know if it was coincidental but after doing this the horse fell.

Correct?
Koi means straighten them up surely?

wellsaid koi,
   and I said before unless your out there riding in a race to say jockeys should not hit a horse more than 8 times in a race is non starter..the rest of the world laugh at us..look how the anti crowd have destroyed the grand national?..its now a ordinary 4 m handicap for a lot of money..all to appease people who wont go racing and don't understand the sport.same with the whip..

I'd imagine it is for safety reasons koi. The very fact that they do have hands and heels races shows it is perfectly possible to not beat a horse to make it run faster. Horses enjoy racing against each other. They will do so in the wild. I agree with you that a jockey should carry a whip to help prevent injury to themselves, other jockeys or their own or others mounts. That's how I'd like to see things in the future but I appreciate that is just one of many opinions. Removing the ability to flog a horse would be the ultimate test of man and beast in my view.

The jockeys live in their own little bubble. It needs someone to criticise them in public. Johnny Francs would be the man.

Rightly or wrongly some horses are lazy by nature. So what do you do with a lazy animal ??

The rule is there to be broken regarding miss use of the whip.  J Moore is a top jock but also a great example of how you can barge your way out trouble and win a group race. 

Rules are there as a guide line nothing more.

The sooner horses start getting chucked out for jockey error and miss use the better.

When watching c4 yesterday i swear i heard them saying that tom was telling off charlie for hitting his so much after the last.

people argue that counting the number of smacks is wrong/irrelevant and takes away from the real issue of action, severity and giving the horse time to respond, but Scudamore was hitting Soll once every 3 strides on the run-in...surely that's not considered enough time to respond?

re. what do you do with a lazy horse...imo if horse is lazy is irrelevant..just cos it's lazy, doesnt mean you have the right to abuse it to get the best out of it...besides, it's a thin/invisible line between being 'lazy' and simply not wanting to be racing

1st time poster 02 Jan 16 17:16
heard that argument this morning from fitzy if there that light and a horse cant feel them,even more reason to get rid considering the ridiculous situation where getting where jocks riding within the rules are losing punters money in photo finishes, laughable in any other sport

Maybe just the way I read it?