Comment: red faces all round as racing's rulers trip over own whip changes again

They tried so hard to get it right, you could feel sorry for them. For this latest whip-related upheaval the BHA got loads of people involved, spent ages talking about it and produced a 95-page review that saw the light of day almost four years after the then chief executive Nick Rust fired the starting pistol on the process by telling the BBC of plans for new penalties and deterrents.

And yet here we are again, officials being forced into last-minute changes because their proposals don't actually work in practice. It's like we're back in 2011, when a stringent new regime was introduced after a ten-month process but then had to be changed twice in the next six weeks.

Actually, we're in a better situation this time because the key flaw has been identified before the rules were actually implemented. In 2011 the changes were made five days before the first ever Champions Day at Ascot, precipitating immediate controversy that dominated the racing news for weeks and led to Richard Hughes (champion for the next three years) threatening to quit.