Welfare in the news but it's better post-racing aftercare that is most needed

The festivals at Cheltenham and Aintree are the two occasions when discussion of equine welfare and racing provokes most attention from the wider world, and this year has been no exception. Subtlety and nuance do not usually feature prominently in such discussions, which usually start with the question of whether something should be banned.

Banning racing full stop was one of the topics of debate on Jeremy Vine's Channel 5 show following an equine fatality at the Cheltenham Festival, while banning the Grand National was discussed on Radio Wales on Monday morning following the sad losses of Discorama and Eclair Surf, as my colleague David Carr discusses here.

Meanwhile, Dr Mark Kennedy, the RSPCA's horse welfare specialist, used the occasion of the Grand National to write an article not only reiterating the organisation's call for the use of the whip to be banned for encouragement in racing, but also saying that more research was needed "to assess whether or not it is necessary to retain the whip for safety purposes".