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Ahead of the biggest week of racing in Australia, The Age’s chief racing writer Damien Ractliffe looks at the whip rules, whether the whip hurts horses or is simply a perception issue, and whether racing authorities in Australia are doing enough to meet community expectations.
Mark Zahra (left) broke the whip rules when he won the Caulfield Cup on Without A Fight.Credit: Getty Images
What are the whip rules?
The rules are pretty simple. Jockeys are only permitted to use the whip on five occasions before the 100-metre mark of a race, and not in consecutive strides, with unfettered use of the permitted in the final 100 metres of the race.
These are national rules, decided upon by the board of Racing Australia.
What penalties apply for breaches of the whip rule?
Jockeys face monetary fines and suspensions for breaching the whip rules. While there is no limit on the total number of times a jockey may use the whip on a horse during the race, the totality will come into consideration for penalties when jockeys use the whip more than five times before the 100-metre mark.
The below table is used by stewards to determine the minimum penalty to be applied by stewards, and the fines handed out are commensurate to prizemoney won in that particular race. For example, Mark Zahra used the whip nine times before the 100 metres and 13 times in total when he won the Caulfield Cup on Without A Fight. That resulted in a seven-meeting suspension and a fine of $50,000 – one third of the $150,000 in prizemoney he would have won – for finishing first in the Caulfield Cup.
Jockey Mark Zahra was penalised for his whip use in the Caulfield Cup.Credit: Fairfax Media
In the 2020 Melbourne Cup, Kerrin McEvoy on runner-up Tiger Moth used the whip 13 times before the 100-metre mark and 21 times in total, incurring a 13-meeting suspension and a $50,000 fine, reduced to $30,000 on appeal.
The table of penalties for breaches of the whip rules in Victorain horse racing.Credit: Racing Victoria
Why are the whip rules controversial?
What makes the rules most controversial is that breaches of the whip rule will rarely impact on the finishing position of the horses, as most stewards have determined they’re unable to quantify how many lengths excessive whip use improves a horse. Only on one occasion in Victoria have stewards upheld a protest and changed the placings of a horse. That was in December last year, when two horses dead-heated for first, but one horse had been excessively whipped beyond what’s permitted, with stewards determining that horse wouldn’t have won the race if the jockey stuck to the rules.
What happens if the jockey who wins the Melbourne Cup breaks the whip rules?
As per the table above, they will receive a fine and potentially a suspension, depending on how many strikes beyond what’s permitted have been used in the race. Given it’s a Melbourne Cup, and total prizemoney sits at about $8.4 million, the fines handed down to jockeys are significant, given they reflect a portion of the prizemoney won in the race.
It’s unlikely, however, that finishing places would be altered by stewards due to a whip breach, given it’s only happened once in Victoria, and on that occasion it was a dead-heat.
Why can jockeys choose when to serve their suspension?
Suspensions don’t have to start immediately, with jockeys given the option to choose when their suspensions start, no more than seven days after the offence. This is on the basis that jockeys have made commitments to owners and trainers to ride their horses in the days after, therefore, as to not punish those owners or leave them without a jockey, rides can choose to delay their suspension.
Mark Zahra broke the whip rules when he won the Caulfield Cup on Without A Fight.Credit: Getty Images
As an example, Zahra had committed to ride Gold Trip in the Cox Plate – seven days after copping his Caulfield Cup suspension – therefore opted for his seven-meeting ban to start at midnight after the Cox Plate.
How do horses react to being whipped? Do they feel pain?
A 2020 study by Professor Paul McGreevy from the University of New England School of Environmental and Rural Science, funded by the RSPCA, determined the top layer of horse skin is of the same thickness and has almost the same number of nerve endings in their skin as humans. While horses have thicker skin, the extra level of thickness was below the level of the nerves, with McGreevy concluding horses do feel pain.
But whether the modern padded whip actually hurts a horse is still inconclusive from a scientific perspective. Racing Victoria’s position is that the whip is not a welfare issue, but more so a matter of perception. The padded whip is made of foam, and its use as an encouragement crop is as much about the sound of the whip as it is the feeling of it.
A journalist for The Guardian in 2011 allowed a jockey to whip him ‘as hard as I’d whip a horse’ and concluded the whip did not hurt.
How do Australians feel about the whip?
According to two surveys conducted by Racing Victoria in 2020, more than half the people surveyed believed whips should be banned from racing, while 87 per cent believed a limit of no more than four strikes in a race should be implemented. Non-racing customers felt much more strongly about the whip being banned than racing customers, who identified themselves as having bet on, watched or attended thoroughbred horse racing in the previous 12 months.
Only once have Racing Victoria stewards relegated a horse whose jockey had broken the whip rules. It occured in a dead-heat in December.Credit: Getty
Of the 1851 people asked whether they supported a reduction in the number of times the whip is permitted to be used on a horse in a race, 75 per cent said “yes” and a further 16 per cent said they were unsure.
When asked what that permitted number should be, 56 per cent said it should be completely banned, eight per cent said once, 10 per cent said twice and 13 per cent said between three and four strikes. Only five per cent of Australians said there should be no limit on the use of the whip.
Should the whip rules be changed?
In Britain, the whip can only be used six times in a flat race. In France and Germany, the limit is five. In Ireland, it’s eight, while Japan and Hong Kong have no limit, but take a discretionary approach to improper or excessive use of the whip.
Vicky Leonard, who founded Kick Up to correct misinformation in the racing industry, and provide people with a balanced perspective and truth based on data, says Australian racing is lagging on the world stage when it comes to whip reform.
“Australia should be leading by example, and currently we’re not in how tightly we regulate it, being the loosest in the last 100 metres of a race when horses are the most fatigued,” Leonard said.
“That’s not necessarily from a pain perspective. It’s more from a perception perspective, we can’t explain it to 20 million Australia that the whip is carried for safety and is designed not to hurt the horse. We believe we should continue to move to world’s best practice … and minimising the perception impact of the whip itself.”
Kerrin McEvoy (left) broke the whip rules in the 2020 Melbourne Cup when second on Tiger Moth.Credit: Getty Images
What is whip-restricted racing, and why did it cause a stir?
Racing Victoria held six races in 2021, as part of a trial to see whether a restriction of five uses of the whip in total would impact racing, wagering, the conduct and safety of racing, or the consistency of form lines. By holding this trial, and creating a penalty framework for any breaches of the five-strike limit, it went against the Rules of Racing adopted by Racing Australia, upsetting a number of other states which make up the Racing Australia board.
The results of that trial, which have not been publicly released, were then brought back to the Racing Australia board table, but the state bodies have been unable to agree to reform the whip rules since.
What’s Peter V’landys got to do with it?
V’landys is the chief executive of Racing NSW, the other major racing jurisdiction in Australia. Between Racing Victoria and Racing NSW, they hold 70 per cent of the voting power at the Racing Australia board table, meaning no changes at a national level can be ratified unless those two states agree.
V’landy’s was aggrieved by Racing Victoria’s move to stage a whip-restricted series in contradiction to the Australian rules of racing, and has long maintained that making the whip rule a big issue is simply pandering to anti-racing people.
“We’ve got to educate the public [that] the whip doesn’t hurt,” V’landy’s told this masthead in 2020. “The old whip did hurt the horse and I would be the first to ban the whip if it did hurt the horse,” he added. “We should be calling it a riding crop. Even the activists are starting to realise the whip doesn’t hurt the horse.”
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