BHA keen to enforce immediate bans following Christophe Soumillon furore

The BHA and France Galop will join an international effort to look at ways of speeding up the processes around suspending racing's participants in extreme disciplinary cases such as the incident at Saint-Cloud involving Christophe Soumillon and Rossa Ryan last Friday.

Chief regulatory officer Brant Dunshea admitted the BHA would be as powerless as its French counterparts were in preventing Soumillon riding in Sunday's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe if a similar situation arose in Britain.

However, Dunshea – who is in Paris attending the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities conference, where he presented key findings from a BHA-commissioned report on climate change and sustainability in racing – revealed that discussions with his opposite numbers from several other leading racing nations had taken place over the weekend, and that the topic was likely to be raised at the IFHA's harmonisation of rules committee meeting in Hong Kong in December.