ABC Unleashed: Whip it Good!

As the Spring Racing Carnival begins in earnest this weekend, Michael Hutak says new rules restricting how jockey's whip their horses are causing controversy.

Outside Melbourne Cup time, Australia's multi-billion dollar horse racing industry usually attracts the attention of the wider general public for all the wrong reasons: betting scams, race fixing, money laundering, "colourful" racing identities, horse doping and claims of animal cruelty are the typical narratives.
However, 2009 has been a year for rougher-than-usual hand-wringing for racing's bosses, faced with a public outcry over horse fatalities in jumps racing, the disturbing re-emergence of positive swabs for performance-enhancing drugs, cyber-attacks from the Russian mafia on Australia's booming online betting shops, and, taking centre stage at the moment, sweeping changes to the rules regarding the use of the whip in races.
The grand irony to all this negative publicity is that the racing game loves nothing more than a public row, and that's exactly what it's got following the introduction of the new whip regime at the start of the new season on August 1.
Racing NSW Chief Steward, Ray Murrihy, explained the new rules to the ABC: "Up to the last 200 metres they can only hit a horse 5 times. You can't lift your arm up above your head. (We have had certain jockeys who use to use the whip as if they were chopping a log with an axe.)
In the last 200m, you have to give the horse an opportunity to respond. You can't hit it every stride, but only every second stride, and on one occasion in the last 200m you can hit three strides in a row."
The cause célèbre came on August 22, when Sydney apprentice Daniel Ganderton was fined his riding fee and winning prizemoney percentage (about $4000 in all) and suspended for six race meetings after his winning the Group 3 Silver Shadow Stakes at Randwick on a three-year-old called Deer Valley.
Ganderton flouted the new restrictions, riding his mount with the whip right to the line, to win the race over another rival which was ridden within the new rules. Ganderton told stewards the horse wouldn't have won without the extra pressure, however, while the jockey copped the punishment, his mount kept the race, prompting calls of foul from punters and owners.
The Silver Shadow being a coveted event, the "winner" was now a much more valuable stud proposition, while the owners of the runner-up got zilch.
Even Murrihy admits that had the Silver Shadow been run on July 31, there would have been no fine, reprimand or suspension for Ganderton. "No, none at all. Wouldn't have contemplated it."
Jockeys, and high-profile owners and trainers have since gone ballistic, threatening what amounts to the turf equivalent of civil disobedience. "I'll be doing everything I can to win" said leading jockey Peter Robl. "And if that means hitting more than the allowable three strides in succession, then I'll be doing it. You won't find any other rider that won't do it in a million-dollar race when you are neck and neck with other horses."
Adman and racehorse owner, John Singleton, chimed in with advice to jockeys not to "worry about your fine, I'll pay you double the fee, just win the race". Big-time bookie, Robbie Waterhouse complained it was hitting his hip pocket: "Everyone is talking about not wanting to bet unless they see horses ridden out with the whip. I think it is starting to have an effect on betting turnover."
His wife, leading trainer Gai Waterhouse, dismissed the new restrictions as the unwanted handiwork of "do-gooders". Others bizarrely claimed it was all the fault of meddling "greenies".
While such carefree commentary is refreshing in an an age when sportspeople clog up the tube with banalities and platitudes, Robl claimed he'd been "misquoted" when pressed by stewards and said he would comply with the new rules.
The stewards then warned trainers and owners that it was an offence under the Australian Rules of Racing "if instructions are given or inducements are offered by any person that might result in a rider breaching the whip rules".
It may be an offence but enforcement is the issue. The jockeys also claim the new rules "are putting the health and safety of riders at risk", while they count how many times they've hit the horse instead of concentrating on riding naturally. Murrihy counters: "There's been markedly less interference in races. We haven't had a suspension for careless riding in the last 200m since the whip rule started."
It's not like the jockeys didn't know what was coming; the changes were announced in March after a wide ranging public inquiry conducted by the Australian Racing Board, taking submissions from both racing industry insiders, horse and animal welfare groups and the general public. They've had six months to prepare. Now they want the rules changed to allow them unfettered discretion to use the whip in the last 100 metres. The Australian Racing Board will hear their case next Thursday.
It's true that Sydney jockey Blake Shinn would have almost certainly lost last year's Melbourne Cup on Viewed had he ridden to the letter of the new rules.
By my count he hit the Bart Cummings-trained gelding 26 times in the last 200m. A rule punishing jockeys for excessive or improper use of the whip has been in place for more than two decades, however it was rarely enforced and never in living memory when horses are fighting out a tight finish.
"Historically, as long as horses were in contention for a placing, stewards were very reluctant to deem any riding excessive," admits Murrihy. "You could have had two horses fighting out a finish being hit 40 or 50 times with the whip. Now I don't recall ever in my career stewards penalising riders for being excessive when a placing was in contest. These new rules are designed to bring Australia in line with most other countries and with community standards that find it a bit abhorrent that a horse can be hit 40 or 50 times with the whip."
The new regime is more in line with South African rules which came into effect on January 1. In the UK, where animal welfare groups have been very successful in targeting abuses in horse racing, the whip is used very sparingly, and Murrihy says "it's fair to say now around the world the very best riders use a lot less whip".
Australian jockeys historically have an international reputation for being very tough on the animal and that strong whip riding was an accepted practice. Murrihy says people would be outraged today at the style of three-time Melbourne Cup winning jockey Jim Johnson, last week inducted into racing's Hall of Fame.
Australia now is only playing catch-up and many of today's best riders such as Kerrin McEvoy, Damien Oliver, Corey Brown, use much less whip to great effect. The modern jockey is more athletic, with more upper body strength and a propensity to put the whip away in the closing stages and really push their horses to the line.
It's generally accepted that the best "hands and heels" rider in the modern era was Peter Cook, who rode from the 60s to the 80s. Cook was a quiet, kind rider who could get the best out of a horse without the whip and who seldom resorted to it even in the tightest finish.
However punters, if one were to treat them as an undifferentiated mass, still want to see the jockey win at all costs, ideally with a whip in each hand with every last ounce extracted from the animal in a tight finish. To most, the whip is the accelerator.
Murrihy says ultimately it's counterproductive. "If you belt a horse hoping to instil a fear of the whip, chances are you'll make it into a dog. It won't respond to the whip, it gets sick of getting a hiding, it lays down and won't do its best."
The other innovation in force since August 1 is the exclusive use of a "less severe", padded whip which has a bark worse than its bite. Critics point out, if you're hitting horse with a whip and it supposedly doesn't hurt, then why restrict its use at all? Murrihy says the new whip is more accurately described as "a kinder whip, not that it doesn't hurt.
There's a general abhorrence to belting animals with anything, so if you simply say I'll give you a whip that doesn't hurt as much and you can hit it 40 times in the straight with this, I don't know that gets you over the welfare hurdle!"
Lou Reed used to sing about the whip "in love, not given lightly", and PETA believes the whip should be restricted to consenting adults only. However the whip is part and parcel of the relationship between human and the domesticated horse, a bond of master and slave stretching to pre-history.
In the equestrian world eventing and dressage, there are rules prohibiting and penalties applicable for excessive use of the whip. So it should stay in racing, and it will.
New rules in the racing game are always met with resistance by vested interests. When the administering of steroids for racehorses was banned in the early 1990s, many trainers claimed it would be the end of racing as we knew it. For some it nearly was: one leading Sydney trainer didn't train a winner for four months after the ban came into force.
In fact predictions of turf Armageddon have been the rote response when, for instance, whenever a "foreign" horse won the Melbourne Cup, when mobile phones were allowed on racecourses, when the TAB was first introduced and then when it was privatised, when the AJC Derby was moved from the Spring to the Autumn, when female jockeys were first given licences, when Robbie Waterhouse was banned over Fine Cotton and 17 years later when he was allowed back on the track, when cable TV broadcasts of the races began, when betting exchanges were allowed to operate, when night racing started - every change has been met with claims of falling sky.
All I can say is, as a journalist, it sure makes great copy.

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Race Invaders

Michael Hutak writes about our responses to the globalisation of that distinctively Australian event, the Melbourne Cup...

<Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal and spontaneous, not perfunctory. I can call to mind no specialised annual day in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation, and preparation, and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one.

Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897)

When Mark Twain attended the Cup in 1895, Melbourne's population was barely a million and yet 10 per cent of the colony's population turned up that day to witness the event, a remarkable turnout. With Melbourne's population today roughly 3.5m, the Cup is only now again approaching the sort of mass appeal it enjoyed at the turn of the 20th century. Crowds of around 400,000 are expected over the four day carnival, precisely double the attendance in 1993 when Irish champion Vintage Crop became the first internationally-trained entry to win the race, heralding the advent of the Cup's "modern era", an era that coincides with the march of globalisation in trade and communications and in the horse racing business. The success of the event in recent years has been driven in part by the considerable public interest generated by the international contingent that hails typically from UK, Ireland, France and more recently Japan.

So it's Cup time again, and the international horses have arrived in numbers looking to win Australia's greatest horse race, this year worth a hefty 5.65 million Australian pesos. Eight internationals will start in the race and they make up seven of the top ten in the betting market, surprising considering for the visitors, it is no easy feat to win, with just two wins since Vintage Crop's (Media Puzzle in 2002 and Japan's Delta Blues in 2006). Add Australia's strict quarantine conditions to the rigours of travelling a horse across the other side of the world to race two miles, often in scorching heat, then for most the adventure ends up a folly costing at least $100,000.

Still, each year, as the first Tuesday in November doth approach, so crescendos the chorus of whining from local trainers and owners who can barely contain their protectionist disgust at the perceived superiority of the international runners. This Spring His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, was the first to deflate the national ego two weeks back when his classy chestnut All The Good strode away with the Caulfield Cup. This cued locals to bemoan more pillaging of homeland's glory, but they neglected to mention the win was the Sheikh's first Group 1 win in Australia in more than a decade trying.

On cue, the tabloids have been cranking up the emotive language in a brew of envy, gall and indignation: "we" are at "the mercy of the raiders"; the "foreign invaders" are so good they have an unfair "stranglehold" on the Cup; there are "fears" this year that "foreign" jockeys will "blight" the race by engaging in team riding, an illegal practice. And the broadsheets have also got into the act: "Australian racing's defence of the Melbourne Cup from a European blitz took a battering," railed the Sydney Morning Herald when construction tycoon Lloyd Williams' 2007 Cup winner, Efficient, was scratched from this year's event during the week. The nation must be at risk when it's left to a former casino boss to "repel the European Invasion" and save the nation from turf capitulation and global embarrassment.

And then there's Bart. Winner of the race an extraordinary 11 times, every year the old marvel clambers up onto the soapbox to tell why the foreigners should stop coming. This year Cummings said it was a case of "spot the Aussie", prompting a good comeback from Ireland's Aiden O'Brien, Coolmore's private and the world's leading trainer who is here with Cup favorite Septimus and two other lesser lights. Asked why his horse, the highest-rated stayer in training, would win: "Septimus, when you ask him, he gives it all.''

The visitors aren't averse to making their own threats, with UK jockey John Egan facing charges for calling local officials "tinpot Hitlers"! On Sunday Tom Magnier, son of Coolmore tycoon John Magnier, threatened to scratch Septimus, making the extraordinary claim that the Flemington track was "not safe, and we'd rather take the horse home than race in the cup... if the track isn't watered." The visitors always call for the track to be watered to improve the chances of European horses which prefer soft racing surfaces. Officials usually oblige, prompting more push back from the locals that the internationals are getting preferred treatment.

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Twain's comment above illustrates the extraordinary popularity the Cup and horse racing held in earlier times in this country. It's not unreasonable to claim that Australians have historically displayed an obsession with the turf not seen among any other people, not even the country which was its cradle: mother England. In fact the thoroughbred is a man-made, in-bred genetic freak which to be eligible to race must be able to trace its family tree back to just three foundation Arabian stallions imported to England in the 18th century. The bluebloods of the turf hold a flattering mirror to the British aristocracy, to which it is its plaything. Breeding is everything, old chap, and the notion that we can breed "the best" with "the best" to realise the equine equivalent of a monarch, the champion racehorse, is the kind of ideology that can launch both a global empire and beget generation upon generation of upper-class twits. With inherited wealth to spare, the poms take their time with their horses, racing them sparingly while young, breeding them to stay the "classic" distance of a mile and half and beyond.

In Australia, it's different. Racing has been a working class and mass entertainment, and we often hear that in Australia the racetrack is the great leveler, where both toff and tradesman are equal before the judge's decision. (Tell that to the 'greencoat' standing guard at the Members' Enclosure gate.) Since the Cold War, we have bred for speed, not stamina, and for a quick return. We buy them as yearlings and race them into the ground at two and three, and then pass them off like a sub-prime loan to the nearest sucker at the first hint of unsoundness. Two year olds scampering with all the precocity of a Chinese gymnast are our go, pounding their baby legs over sprint courses for big prizemoney in races like Sydney's Golden Slipper. As for the Melbourne Cup, its two mile marathon distance has always been an anomaly, and before the era of the "overseas raiders", local trainers used to greet the "Kiwi invasion" of stayers in the English mould with a similar derision.

The Antipodean breed, while technically a thoroughbred, has historically not run thick with the bluest blood of the most influential UK and continental sirelines. Not until the 1990s, when the bloodstock industry went through a period of consolidation and globalisation which has seen the emergence of two dominant global breeding and racing operations: Ireland's Coolmore Stud and Dubai's Darley, owned by Shiekh Mohammed. Following the Shiekh's $400m purchase earlier this year of the country's biggest stable, Woodlands Stud, the two rivals have each established large Australian operations. Coolmore's billionaire owners race Cup favourite Septimus while the Sheikh's big hope, All the Good has been scratched. The racing game as it turns out is a fount of tolerance for the big spending Emir who, along with his brother Sheikh Hamdan build a global empire after rescuing the British racing industry from terminal decline when the local aristocracy were going through a tough patch in the 1970s.

With 24/7 coverage online and on cable TV, racing fans now follow the best horses on a global racing calendar: the Dubai World Cup in May, the Kentucky Derby and Royal Ascot in the Northern Summer, the Arc de Triomphe in October, the US Breeders Cup and the Melbourne Cup in November and the Japan Cup and Hong Kong Internationals in December. The ascension of the Melbourne Cup to the attention of this exalted audience has been due in no small measure to the trailblazing efforts of Weld and Vintage Crop and those that have since made the journey in numbers with, it must be said, not much success.

However the Cup going global seems to have ruptured the proud maelstrom of the Australian turf and the role a horse race plays in the national narrative. In a globalised world dominated by the large developed and emerging economies, "little Australia" must punch above its weight to stay in the game. But faced with international competition in the Melbourne Cup, the locals view themselves as wanting, their bubble of self-congratulation lanced like a boil full of hubris. For the rest of the year they remain convinced that our racing and horses are the best in the world. Except, when one looks at the results of the international horses, three cup wins in two decades, their dominance is also a myth. The key to this conundrum? Anthropomorphism. Thoroughbreds do not vote and are not citizens. Horses are stateless, have no truck with nationalism, couldn't care less about good breeding and have no idea what a cultural cringe is. They win because of talent and circumstance, not what it says on their trainer's passport.

Hutak's Cup tips: New Zealand four year old Nom du Jeu has a regal carriage, a powerful finish, deep wells of stamina and class to spare. Dermot Weld is back again with the classy mare Profound Beauty. With a postage stamp weight of 51.5kgs, and Glen Boss wasting to make the ride, the smart money is on. Melbourne grey Barbaricus has been the local revelation of the Spring. Will race handy and fight on to the finish.
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Europeans fancied to lift Melbourne Cup

MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov 5 (AFP) - Irish entry Far Cry and England's Enzeli have firmed as favourites to lift the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday -- Australia's biggest and richest race.

Bookmakers report strong support for both the Martin Pipe-trained Far Cry, which has firmed into 7-1 second favourite, and 1999 Ascot Gold Cup winner Enzeli, which has been heavily backed this week into 10-1.

The other two European entrants, Arctic Owl and Godophin stables Lightning Arrow, both from English stables, also feature prominently in the market but have yet to be significantly backed in ante-post betting.

At a press conference Sunday, the visiting trainers all expressed satisfaction with the way their horses had settled in and preparedness for the big race.

"Far Cry is just as good as he was going into the Ascot Gold Cup when he ran second to a very good horse in Kayf Tara," said Pipe.

"Hes very laid back, doesnt worry about anything but he comes to life in a race so were very happy. We wouldn't change a thing going into the race."

Barring Arctic Owl, the European entries faired well in the crucial barrier draw.

Enzeli is perfectly placed in lane six, as is Far Cry in 10. Lightning Arrow in 14 will need luck, but they all do in two mile (3,200 metres) races with 24 runners.

Arctic Owls Newmarket trainer James Fanshawe said he was "not too disappointed" with the horses draw in barrier 21.

"Theres a long run to the first turn at Flemington so he has plenty of time to get into a position," he said.

While Fanshawe was concerned at the horses lacklustre temperament early last week, it worked strongly Sunday morning and was "much brighter now and more like his old self."

Enzelis Epsom Derby winning mentor, John Oxx, said his horse had not been flashy in his workout but he was still happy.

He did though sound a note of warning on the task ahead: "In these days of international competition in racing, to come halfway round the world and win this race is a much bigger task than people realise."

Melbourne property developer and former casino owner Lloyd Williams bought Enzeli last month from the Aga Khan for an undisclosed six figure sum, and promptly engaged local jockey Greg Hall for the Cup ride.

"We would normally have brought over Johnny Murtagh," Oxx said. "But Greg Hall is retained by Mr. Williams and he has the local knowledge.

"There is always a debate about who might be best -- the jockey who knows the horse or the jockey who knows the track. But the Melbourne Cup is a unique race, a tough race and Im not sorry to see Greg on the horse."

Godolphin stable manager Brad Marzato was bristling with confidence over Lightning Arrows prospects: "He has really picked up in his work and I couldnt be happier."

However, the five-year-old lacks the class of his fellow travellers and is the least fancied of the international runners.

Certainly he is rated inferior to Godolphins runner last year, Central Park, which ran a mighty race for second behind Bart Cummings 11th Melbourne Cup winner Rogan Josh.

Incredibly, Cummings will be without a runner this year after Oxford Dollar was balloted out of the race on Saturday night.

No Northern Hemisphere raider has been successful in the worlds greatest two mile handicap since Vintage Crops courageous Cup victory for Dermot Weld in 1993.

Every year international runners such as Double Trigger, Oscar Schindler, Arabian Story, Faithful Son and Travelmate have been touted as vastly superior to the home breds, but almost every year the local heroes win.

This year the John Hawkes trained Freemason will carry the Australian hopes.

Other local runners to attract betting support are Diatribe at 7- 1, and New Zealand's Kaapstad Way at 8-1, which will not run if the track is severely rain affected.

But after drying winds in Melbourne over the weekend, the track is likely to be in good order for "the race that stops a nation."

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First published by Agence France-Press

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