Think twice before pontificating that jockeys need to ride to the whip rule because the rule is an ass

Four months have passed since this column last lamented the omnishambles that is the BHA’s whip fixation. On that occasion, tiresome was a word I used to describe my own repeated objections to the regulator’s determination to keep the sport’s use of the whip high on the agenda. In the meantime I've tried to exercise some patience but silence equates to complicity. 

My protestation in February turned on Julie Harrington’s inexplicable wielding of research that purported to reveal a cohort with no interest in racing who thought it was a cruel sport as the justification for imposing the latest changes to the whip rules on the eve of the Cheltenham Festival. 

The exasperation was rooted in an overwhelming sense of futility and the sense that, given the direction of travel over the past decade, there is an insidious agenda at play to ultimately remove the whip to placate a minority of misguided meddlers. As I said at the time, it won't end there and it won't end well.