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I thought I’d share a personal story as I myself have officially been accused of bullying and subsequently suspended during investigation in a previous employment in my younger years, along with a few others I worked with I should add, and its a very tricky area to deal with as its such a strong allegation to make. I was mortified. I won’t go into the specifics on here but it would be fair to say it was a boisterous workplace and there was a lot of banter if you will and laddish behaviour that went on and for whatever reason this colleague decided to make official complaints that he was being bullied by myself and others as he felt uncomfortable. I can hand on heart say I didn’t feel I’d bullied him at any stage and for what its worth his grievances fell down and we all kept our jobs ultimately because he’d never at any other stage expressed that he was unhappy with the behaviour that existed, had he done so I would like to think things would have calmed down and we’d never have ended up where we did. While we kept our jobs its safe to say the culture changed massively post incident/s. This doesn’t appear to be the case with Bryony, I believe its been suggested she has tried to get it sorted informally and if things still carried on after that point then I feel very sorry for her and would hope that much like what I experienced the incident can lead to changes in the workplace for the better.
Of course this has been badly handled by the BHA, Mickey; bad impression after bad impression… and I agree the time involved is awful.
If things come out officially then yes “quicker the facts come out the better“; but not if facts come out bit by bit, are sensationalised by the press and / or skewed in favour of the person’s opinion that leaked it. Yes, we all want everyone who’s “out of order dealt with”, but these leaks might instead actually mean the opposite. ie Leaking could make a fair hearing impossible and therefore they won’t have any choice but to drop the case. Am sure the leaker had good intentions but doing so may yet backfire, resulting in Frost unable to get justice.
Value Is EverythingThere is another article from the Guardian:
Interesting to read that the
Four current female riders – Lilly Pinchin, Gina Andrews, Page Fuller and Millie Wonnacott – reportedly told the investigator that they had not witnessed any bullying behaviour by Dunne.
How do I understand this? Maybe, little Bryony need a bit more attention at times.
Apparently she doesn’t get the number of rides, she’d like to get as Seasider pointed out.
Ex RubyLight, just because some other female jockeys say they haven’t observed bullying by Dunne doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Also they might be more likely to say this if it is the culture of the weighing room and they want to fit in. Based on reports to date, there’s plenty of evidence of hostility between Dunne and Frost at the very least.
I also don’t get this thing about Bryony Frost being attention-seeking. The media like her because she’s a female jockey who’s done well and she’s a good talker. How does that make her egotistical or attention-seeking though? I don’t know her, but have seen no sign of that in her media appearances.
Gingertipster : “Yes, we all want everyone who’s “out of order dealt with”, but these leaks might instead actually mean the opposite. ie Leaking could make a fair hearing impossible and therefore they won’t have any choice but to drop the case. Am sure the leaker had good intentions but doing so may yet backfire, resulting in Frost unable to get justice.”
A Sherlock Holmes alternative interpretation is: with Robbie Dunne’s lawyers and his professional body (PJA) both now calling for the BHA to abandon the investigation because of leaks to the press, surely it is unlikely that a Bryony Frost supporter is the leaker.
The PJA has been around since 1969, so their self-congratulatery statement that they have a code of conduct for jockeys beggars the question why it took fifty-two years to write one. The answer to the fifty-two year question has to be the Dunne/Frost altercation, and because previous incidents had been efficiently brushed under the carpet. Their self-congratulatery acceptance that, in the weighing room, senior jockeys educate junior jockeys, joins the BHA in accepting the idea that the jockeys are self-governing in that environment, and is nothing to be proud of. This stance is untenable, especially after the jolt they must have received by Gaye Kelleway’s revelations in 2017, quickly followed by twelve others who reported the same type of abuse. Whatever the trajectory of the current case, both the BHA and PJA cannot allow the status quo to continue, because once it is in the public eye, they just look foolish, old-fashioned, inept and/or lazy. They should both admit they have done a woeful job in recent times and urgently make plans to put things right, instead of trying to mount a pathetic defence of “it wasn’t us Guv”. The BHA is in charge of the whole circus, and the PJA should show some leadership and responsibility for all their members.
Is anyone aware of Paul Nicholls having had anything to say on the bullying issue, especially given Bryony’s relationship with his stable? As has been pointed out previously, industry voices speaking in her support seem to have been very thin on the ground.
No chance Pumpkin Head Nicholls will stick his neck out. They are one cosy little club who think anyone outside the industry should shut up and mind their own business.
BUY THE SUN
It’s seemed to me that Nicholls has wanted rid of her for a while, she only rides certain horses from certain owners and most of the time rides everything Lucy Wadham puts out.
Me neither Marlingford. To me she comes across as rather embarrassed about all the media hoo-haa surrounding her riding successes.
Frost has ridden for the following trainers this season:
Paul Nicholls 33, Neil King 15, Lucy Wadham 14, Jimmy Frost 13, Max Young 2, Diane Sayer 1, Don Cantillon 1, Pat Murphy 1. That’s 80 rides for 16 winners at 20%, a percentage that compares favourably with her success rate in the previous 4 seasons. However, the number of rides is far fewer.
I’m told that Bryony rode for 26 different trainers last season in comparison with 7 (well, 4 really) this season. I’d be happy if someone could confirm or deny this.
In response to Ex-RubyLight, I wouldn’t argue that Frost is looking for attention because she isn’t getting rides. More probably she isn’t getting rides because she’s done something that is ‘not the done thing’ as far as the weighing room is concerned, and she is now being ostracised for that transgression. Bryony seems to have performed the horse racing equivalent of leaving the Mormon Church.
It now worries me that the apparent Omertà-driven culture in the weighing room is also embraced by some trainers for whom she has ridden in previous seasons. The figures given in this post suggest this is not at all unlikely. Whether Frost and her advisors factored in this possible downside to her BHA complaint we cannot yet know. I would certainly hope they did, and if so that makes Bryony’s decision to go to the BHA even more courageous.
This contretemps with Robbie Dunne began in 2016 ago when, to get Biblical, he first confronted her with his nakedness. Given the other statements she has made to the BHA, published by The Sunday Times, I’m astonished that in 5 years no senior jockey ever saw fit to intervene.
It’s here that I have a problem. I find it very hard to believe that a person such as Richard Johnson, who I greatly respect, appears to have such a different view of what transpired over those 5 years than Frost does. That is a conundrum.
Nevertheless, I believe Bryony Frost to be speaking the truth.
I’m not doubting the bullying, not at all. But I think that the support she receives from other female jockeys is rather thin or somewhere around zero.
As already mentioned on this thread, I’m quite sure that there is some foul language in the weighing room and also during the race. We can be quite sure that racial or homophobic slurs have been used over the past decades. Yet no one (jockeys and also stable staff) came out to make such misbehaviour public. I’m glad she did it, but I doubt she’ll get any support within the sport.
Pumpkinhead and other senior trainers failed to defend her actions, probably because this sport likes to have bad publicity being swept under the carpet.
Not many trainers criticized Elliott, even less show support for her and no one ever said Jim Bolger’s claims were true.
People on here trying to come across as paragons of virtue while referring to a trainer (who is not at fault in the slightest regarding this case) by a derogatory description of their physical appearance?
Amusing and confusing in equal measure.
Ruby,
The apparent lack of support from other female jockeys is understandable.
From The Sunday Times article published 24 October and posted on page 5 of this thread:
Frost listed the names of fellow jockeys Lilly Pinchin, Millie Wonnacott, Gina Andrews, Hannah Welch and Page Fuller as others who had been on the receiving end of what she described as Dunne’s “crudeness”.
I’m curious to know whether Bryony discussed this subject with the five jockeys before putting their names forward as similarly offended females.
Whether or not she did, the four female jockeys currently riding now offer limited support to Frost. The exception is Welch, no longer riding, who described this confrontation following a race at Chepstow 3 years ago:
Mr Dunne placed himself right in front of me and was squaring and mouthing off at me. He swore at me multiple times. This went on for around one minute. The incident occurred in front of the entire weighing room. I was crying and did not say anything back. When I look back on this, I find it bizarre that none of the other jockeys intervened and said to Mr Dunne he had gone far enough.
Hannah Welch is not the only one who finds it bizarre.
She continued:
I can imagine that it would be more difficult for a person still involved in racing to make a statement like this.
Pinchin, Wonnacott, Andrews, and Fuller may well have taken the view that their livelihoods are more important than a negative contribution to weighing room harmony.
Seasider, I’m inclined to give people such as Richard Johnson the benefit of the doubt. If he saw a sustained campaign of abuse or a serious incident then I’d have hoped he would have stepped in, but he might have just seen one or two things and put it down to those awful words “bickering” and “banter”. I think you would have to be crazy to want to get involved every time seemingly lesser issues arose, and doing so would be an exhausting and thankless task.
“People on here trying to come across as paragons of virtue while referring to a trainer (who is not at fault in the slightest regarding this case) by a derogatory description of their physical appearance?”
Its a nickname used on a Podcast I enjoy. Sue me.
BUY THE SUN
The more comes out the more it looks like the is a code of silence in the weighing room and while I can understand it surely we have to stop the behaviours that are clearly going on. Loads of female jockeys I’m sure have had to put up with it but don’t want to jeopardise their chances of getting on horses. This is 2021 and the racegoer is getting a pretty damming impression of the culture of racing. There is obviously banter but when it crosses the line it has to stop. It would seem to me most jockeys live in their own bubble and probably the incidents hardly registered with them.
If racing keeps sweeping things under the carpet it will keep on getting bad press and damage.
Is it any wonder there is a huge staff shortage, which has being ongoing long before brexit,as Im sure many folk are put off when the stories inevitably are heard in racing communities. In my day folk like dunne would have had a wee chill chat and told to can it.
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