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A very small one in fact, just sixteen days:
Forget Frankie…. The on-the-day racecourse stewards suspended David Allan for eight days for his ride on Art Power in the Champions Sprint.
Abide by the rules and lose the race
Abide by the rules which gives you 8 days off but win your first group 1 EVERIts a no brainer
Sort the rules out
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
Said it before – unless they lose the race for doing it they will continue to cheat.
Not the only sport to have these issues……football (professional fouls that only get a yellow card but in doing so stop a likely goal being scored) and F1 (5 second penalties given for some infringements that don’t always end up costing a driver anything or being given multiple chances for exceeding track limits) for instance.
Hell no different in everyday life, everyone knows what the speed limits are and yet people still speed, some get done for it and others get away with it and the penalties don’t stop people from continuing to offend, same with parking where you shouldn’t and being fined.
I am still waiting for a time where a Steward in an enquiry asks a jockey why he didn’t continue riding a full out finish (in a race he lost by a short margin) and then the Steward being told as an explanation ‘well I reached my permitted number of strikes and I didn’t want to risk winning the race and then getting the horse disqualified for going above the number of strikes’.
Where we are now is why I didn’t think bringing in a set number of strikes was the right way to go, because it would be viewed as: well if you are using the whip up to that set number it is perfectly acceptible but oh sonny jim if you even go one over or more ….you are somehow cheating and/or subjecting the horse to unfair treatment.
Originally it was said that it was done to be a line as to where an enquiry would be triggered but it wouldn’t necessarily mean a ban would be given out and that it was not going to be reduced to a counting exercise and that as soon as you go over that limit it automatically equals a ban (which is exactly what happens now).
We all know that there were a number of jockeys riding at Ascot (and every other racing day) that have exceed the whip limit (some winning, probably a lot more losing) and don’t get noticed either way so there clearly isn’t a fully satisfactory position that the powers that be can take and it might just be that we have to accept the lesser of two evils…..such as we do in a lot of things in everyday life.
Incidentally you don’t see Stewards pulling any jockeys at all for striking their mounts around the very back of the number cloth, which you can see pretty much all jockeys (flat and jumps) do in a finsih at some point and which I understand to be the incorrect place to be using the whip……..guess that doesn’t count because it would result in most jockeys being suspended if they did.
I’ve just replayed the last half mile of the Trawlerman/Kyrios race three times. And it’s my view that if you stop counting and simply watch the race, Moore was much harder on Kyprios than Dettori was on Trawlerman.
In fact I reckon Moore used his whip eight times, but no ban for him, so perhaps I’m seeing things.
And I’d say Dettori used his six times, several of which were no more than flicks compared to the round arm smacks being applied by Moore.
The suggestion that Dettori won the race by ‘cheating’ is imo barking mad. But this is what the business of counting leads to, as opposed to using your eyes and common sense to decide whether or not the horse has been abused by excessive use (or misuse) of the whip.
As the rules stand, a jockey that hits a 2yo running 5F on debut on fast ground six times, is innocent. But a jockey that goes one over six times on a mature horse running 2M on soft ground, is a criminal. As a long standing owner, I know which of those two I’d never use again!
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