My concern with rule setting is that knowing when a horse has nothing else to give is such an inexact art. Horses respond to the whip in different ways, and there will always be varying opinions on how much they have left in the tank.
Presumably the large majority of horses in Saturday’s National had reached the very borderline of what they could give, and many of the jockeys would be sailing close to the limit of what any rule deemed as acceptable.
One area where I would like to see more progress though, and which could be fitted into a rules-based structure, is in a further significant reduction in the amount of whip usage permitted.