The turf
On a sombre note
Robin Oakley
There has been a sombre note to racing this past week or two. Not only have we seen the tragic death here of the well-liked conditional jockey Richard Davis after the useless Mr Sox somersaulted onto him at Southwell, two flat race jockeys in Aus- tralia also lost their lives in separate inci- dents. It is a reminder that the risk of dying, even in a flat race, is twice as high as in motor racing. Davis was the ninth jockey to die here since 1974. It also puts into per- spective some of the fuss there has been this season about the number of jockey sus- pensions.
Sometimes it seems that scarcely a cou- ple of days go by without one top jockey or another being 'rested' by the stewards for a few days, perhaps for `squeezing up' anoth- er horse as they came out of the stalls, or for poaching another's ground by crossing or for barging through a `gap' that was not really there. The old days when any cock and bull story would do in the stewards room are well and truly gone. Never again, I suspect, will there be a repetition of the verdict by officials at one Irish meeting who recorded: `The stewards accepted jockey A. Rascal's explanation that he could offer no explanation.' And it is good for punters, horses and the jockeys them- selves that the discipline is tighter, even though the penalties may not always work out evenly.
Derby-winning jockey Michael Hills is a case in point. He is appealing against a three-day ban imposed after he was adjudged to have interfered with Van Gurp in switching his own mount Polinesso towards the outside during a humdrum race at Doncaster last week.
For Hills the punishment is not the three days riding fees he will have lost on July 26, 27 and 29, if his appeal has been turned down on Wednesday by the Jockey Club's disciplinary committee. It will be the lost opportunity of riding Pentire in this Satur- day's King George VI and Queen Eliza- beth Diamond Stakes, and of collecting 10 per cent of the whopping prize if he wins the race, which the two lost last year only by a neck to Lammtarra. I talked to Michael Roberts, the eight times champion jockey in South Africa and one of the most experienced riders internationally, about how the discipline compares here.
He reckons that discipline for jockeys is very much tighter than it was ten years ago and he argues: 'That's a good thing for rac- ing, because we were getting a bit slack.' In the old days few worried about what hap- pened out in the country before the last few furlongs, and there were a number of falls. The jockeys themselves, he says, had meetings with the stewards urging tougher action against those who took advantage and now there is a close eye all the way.
European riders, he says, are on the whole very sensible and have a lot of respect for each other. 'There's not that win-at-all-costs business which I think you see in Australia. In races there you knock them over, you get a month's suspension but you keep the race.' He hasn't ridden in Australia, but he was one of the rare for- eign riders to get a three months licence to ride in the richly-endowed races in Japan.
There, he says, there are no ifs and buts. The disciplinary system is one of the tough- est. For any riding offence there is an auto- matic six days suspension, starting with the next meeting. `But there are very, very few suspensions. The jockeys know where they stand and they don't take any risks whatso- ever. They'd rather lose a race than risk a suspension. I've seen a horse there win a race by eight lengths and still be disquali- fied simply because the jockey had tight- ened up a couple of the others coming out of the stalls. They don't play around. It's strict but it's fair.'
Deterrence works, it seems, in Japanese racing. The jockeys ride with care at every stage of the race. But Michael Roberts thinks their system rather too harsh to rec- ommend it here. His own motto is `do as you would be done by'. He says: 'once you're out there there are certain aspects you can take advantage of. If you got a bad draw you used to be able to jump out of the stalls and squeeze over. But nowadays you can't get away with it. I've always been very anti squeezing up people. You might "do" someone today and tomorrow you might need a bit of help from the same person and they'll say "bugger you".'
But what about the way the penalties work out? Is it fair to jockeys, and, for that matter, to ante-post punters when a three day suspension for one jockey means the loss of a couple of rides in Brighton sellers and for another committing exactly the same offence it is the loss of a clutch of plum rides at Royal Ascot? They do it dif-
ferently, it seems, in South Africa. There, if a jockey appeals he can have the sen- tence carried over for a fortnight or so. `And if he's been carded (booked in advance and the booking publicised) for a big race then he can keep the ride.'
Where Michael Roberts is less keen on the new disciplinary code in Britain is over whipping offences. He objects to the specific limits on the number of times a horse may be hit. 'No one wants to see horses battered to win or hit out of their stride. But it is better to watch the kind of ride a horse is given and to judge that. Let the vet judge if the horse is marked. Let the stewards decide if the stick has been used too much on a beaten animal that was not improving its position and then let the jockeys be punished if they've done wrong.'
An argument for discretion. And Michael Roberts also makes one for pri- orities. What jockeys object to most, he says, is that relationship between the sen- tences for whips and the sentences for careless riding. Two cracks extra with the whip is unlikely ever to kill a horse. But as we have been sadly reminded these past ten days, jockeys can get killed, and some- times careless riding can be the cause.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC
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