Jockeys wage war on new whip rules - and it's now crunch time for the PJA

After hardly saying a word in the five months since the new British whip rules were unveiled, several jockeys broke ranks last week and denounced the radical changes set to be implemented next month.

Given we had come up against a wall of silence from senior figures in the weighing room, it must have been more in hope than expectation that my colleague Catherine Macrae tried to gather the views of the likes of Jim Crowley and Richard Kingscote at Lingfield on Thursday. Yet they spoke openly about the challenge of adapting to the rules, which ban the use of the whip in the forehand position – for aesthetic reasons – and allow disqualification for the most extreme breaches.

From there the floodgates opened. The following day another colleague of mine James Stevens spoke to a number of jump jockeys, including Harry Cobden, who described the situation as "bloody ridiculous". They criticised the mandated technique and warned of a succession of bans before the Cheltenham Festival after the jumps bedding-in period next month.