Why We Worship the Whip in Horse Racing?
By Sharan Kumar
In Indian racing, the whip is treated with more
reverence than a temple bell. To punters, it is the magic wand that guarantees
victory. To stewards, it is the measuring stick of effort. To many jockeys, it
is their passport to safety—because heaven forbid you lose a close finish
without brandishing it like a cavalry sword.
The irony? The whip is not a miracle device. Once a
horse is blowing hard and running on fumes, no amount of flailing can make it
sprout an extra gear. As seasoned riders admit: “If he’s spent, he’s spent.
No whip in the world can make him sprout wings.”
Yet our officials cling to their contradictions. In
one infamous case at a premier jurisdiction, a jockey was actually pulled up
for failing to use the whip—in a race where whips weren’t even allowed! The
Stipes, it seemed, simply wanted to score a point against a trainer whose
pattern of running horses always confounded them, a trainer who somehow managed
to stay one step ahead of the rule book. So, they tried to invent a fault where
none existed. Somewhere, Franz Kafka must have chuckled, while the jockey stood
there wondering if he is being pulled up for not using an invisible whip.
History is full of such whip-worship. A champion
jockey once lost a Derby by a whisker at Bangalore, only for the horse’s
breeder to insist he’d bet everything on a re-run—with “more whipping”
guaranteeing victory. Sadly, racing doesn’t offer a replay button. The myth of “one
more smack and he’d have won” lives on, unburdened by science or common
sense.
Across the globe, the debate is equally absurd. Ryan
Moore diplomatically praises tighter rules, Jim Crowley fumes about bans he
“didn’t know he’d earned,” Frankie Dettori serves his suspensions with a shrug,
and in America, riders like Junior Alvarado contest whip penalties like
courtroom dramas. Meanwhile, no winning horse has ever been disqualified for
whip breaches—though medication violations routinely strip results. One day,
perhaps, even that sacred cow will fall.
Back home, Indian jockeys live in a perpetual
Catch-22. Whip too much, and you’re labelled cruel. Whip too little, and you’re
accused of not trying. Many sensible riders know hands, heels, and rhythm are
often enough—but fear of the stewards drives them to flog anyway, lest someone
say they didn’t give their “best.”
As Suraj Narredu put it: “In England, they are
excessively strict. A jockey is expected to whip at interval of three strides. You will get punished if you hit on the second
stride. It’s hard to realise unless of
course you get used to it.”
The contradictions don’t end there. At the close of
the Mumbai season, star jockey Akshay Kumar was slapped with a ten-race-day ban
from using the whip for his fourth whip offence. On paper, it sounded
straightforward: ten Mumbai race days. In reality, it was anything but.
With no centralised rules in India and no all-India
count of whip offences, the penalty bizarrely applied across the country. Since
Mumbai had shut shop and other centres were running depleted calendars,
Akshay’s “ten race days” translated into more than two months of suspension
and, effectively, a professional dead-end.
The collateral damage? Owners who had retained him as
their stable jockey suddenly found themselves without their No.1 rider. And
Akshay himself discovered an unspoken truth of Indian racing: no matter your
stature, no one wants to leg up a jockey riding without a whip. It is seen as
career suicide.
As Suraj Narredu bluntly put it: “I believe this
rule is absurd when there is no central licensing of jockeys and common rules
followed at all centres.”
For Indian racegoers used to whip counts being more
suggestion than scripture, the idea of timing strikes to the stride sounds
almost comical. Yet it neatly underlines the absurdity of the global whip
debate: the same action that makes you a hero in one country can make you a
villain in another.
So the myth survives. In the eyes of too many, effort
is measured not by horsemanship or judgement but by how often the stick was
raised. Until that changes, the whip will remain less a tool of correction and
more a theatre prop, worshipped for powers it never really had.
The whip is not a magic wand that works wonders.
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