from The Australian........Bob getting nasty splinters from sitting on the fence.
THE time has come. The VRC spring carnival, which begins with tomorrow's Derby meeting, will determine whether the Australian Racing Board is as inept and timid as it appears. The nation will be drawn to thoroughbred racing like no other week in the year. It is the seven days of big numbers. Large race fields, lots of races, outrageous punting, record crowds, enormous prize money. And horses will be flogged many times over.
It wasn't meant to be this way. The whipping bit at least. The ARB promised last December that it would introduce significant changes to the whip rules that would see a change in the very culture of race riding in Australia. The board talked big, talked loud. The start of the new racing season saw new protocols. The whip could be used only five times before the 200m. Once inside the final 200m a jockey could whip a horse three times in consecutive strides but not in consecutive strides after that.
Here's the sort of rhetoric from the ARB that followed the whip changes. The board chairman Bob Bentley said: "These changes send a clear message that Australian Racing is fully attuned to contemporary community expectations. The need for change is clear and there was no point fiddling around at the edges. There is no point procrastinating where there is industry and public expectations that practices of the past are no longer condoned. Once we opened up the subject we were determined to do it properly." Them's fighting words, all right.
Two months had not gone by before jockeys went on strike and the whip rules were rewritten twice more. Essentially rules have been diluted and the penalties so absurd that a jockey can hit a horse as many times as he likes. He will be treated no differently to a jockey who celebrates a victory on the line.
So much then for Bentley's blather when the whip rule was introduced. Cop this drivel: "Some people are uncomfortable with change but racing needs to change and be proactive. There are a lot of things that society condoned 50 years ago but which are now seen as unacceptable, and this is one of them. When something remains stuck in the same position for 50 years you start to worry whether it still has a heartbeat - well that's not going to happen to Australian racing. It is our job to make sure that racing remains fresh and relevant so that millions of Australians go on enjoying it into the future."
That was No Whips Bentley back in March. The ARB is compromised. Because it is not independent it is easily manipulated by an industry that is both driven and riven by self-interest. Its impotence has forced RSPCA Australia to take up a fight for which the ARB had no stomach. Yesterday the animal-welfare body posted on its website its own form guide to the spring carnival. Called The Poor Form Guide, it names leading jockeys who have breached the whip rules. It asks racegoers and punters not to follow these jockeys.
Under headings like "Whips are so last season", "Big whip, small ...", and "Less is more", the guide argues that whips are cruel and the now-tattered whip rule inadequate. It is clearly directed at women and asks racegoers on Oaks Day to wear a free RSPCA ribbon showing their disgust at the practices of whipping horses and jumps racing.
The RSPCA's chief scientist Dr Bidda Jones started the campaign with a radio interview yesterday morning. She argued that the jockeys named in the guide are good enough horsemen not to need the whip to get a horse to do its best work. She declared they were elite athletes. They should show leadership.
Jones also said there was no evidence to sustain the thoroughbred industry's claim that the padded whip did not hurt horses. It is common sense that the whip is a stimulant and the horses react to the pain inflicted.
Her remarks brought the normal inane reaction. One listener argued that a horse is treated very well indeed so a little whipping every now and then should be considered respectable. We look after our children, too, but that hardly gives us a licence to belt them every other Saturday. Such is the level of debate.
The suggestion that the whip merely encourages a horse is self-serving dross unworthy of men and women who train and ride our horses.
The racing industry is on trial over the next week like never before in its history. We'll leave it to No Whips Bentley to put a case for the ARB exactly as he did in a press release in March: "A number of other countries are watching very closely what we do here and I think will follow our lead in the near future." Dear God.
