Racing’s regulator did not seek to persuade a disciplinary panel that elastic bands on the whip flap caused a horse’s injury
When we finally reach our deathbeds and are reflecting on all that went before, few of us will be wishing we’d spent more time in the hearings dungeon at the
British Horseracing Authority. But I do wish, with the benefit of hindsight, that I’d gone along to the Danny Brock “modified whip” hearing last month which has since become such a hot topic. It’s good of the BHA to open up their hearings to press but unfortunately on this occasion it appears that no one took them up on it.
So we’re left to rely on the published reasons for an account of what happened. The detail that jumps out at me is the panel’s conclusion that “the modification of Mr Brock’s whip could not be said to have caused or contributed to the wealing of the horse”. In other words, they punished Brock on the basis that his act of leaving elastic bands on the end of his whip had not caused his mount’s injury.