Lydia Hislop column: Interference debate and the disciplinary processes of the BHA and PJA

Only this week on Twitter, I breached the cognitive omerta by lamenting the loss to British racing of Enable dodging a clash with Love in the Yorkshire Oaks, which spiralled into why history won’t currently recognise her as a true great. Turns out I was disrespecting my betters and motivated solely by self-promotion.

For jockeys, this suffocating enforced accord manifests in not always saying what they think about a riding incident in the stewards’ room, or to the media afterwards, or perhaps even when called to give evidence before the disciplinary panel at a colleague’s appeal against a penalty handed out at a racecourse.

Even in matters that ultimately impact on their own collective safety – officially – they usually keep their mouth shut or, better, play the whole thing down.

Perhaps champion jockey Oisin Murphy put it most succinctly when asked by me on Racing TV last Friday to account for why some of his colleagues acknowledge they adjust their riding in Britain compared with, say, Australia and had privately raised concerns about the prevailing attitude to interference on British tracks.

“It’s important that we discuss these things but perhaps not focus on them too much,” Murphy said. “And perhaps the people who want to discuss them, particularly jockeys, can come to my media training and we’ll talk about it together.” Asked what he meant by that, he added: “We’ll just learn to talk about things like that in a nice way.”

Murphy had earlier said: “We had a weight debate before, we have the stick [whip] every now and then, and now it’s interference. Obviously, it’s the press’ job to flag up issues but we’re creating an issue out of nothing. We need to admire our racing here. We have the best horses and the best jockeys and the best trainers and some fantastic patrons and sponsors, so let’s just be thankful for what we have.”

This was unsettling – and not merely to imagine some dystopian media-training spewing out jockey droids. Murphy was one of the signatories in support of an article written in mid-July by At The Races columnist Kevin Blake, calling for stricter stewarding in the arena of interference in both Britain and Ireland.

Despite also garnering the support of the likes of Aidan O’Brien and John Oxx on this issue, Blake has since been publicly criticised by other trainers and jockeys for – seemingly – daring to express a view. Again, he was accused of self-interest rather than taken to believe in what he said.

His opinion piece has brought into sharp focus the disparate mutterings of various trainers whose horses have, at best, lost a competitive chance due to what they perceive to be a laissez-faire attitude to interference by both jockeys and Britain’s racecourse stewards. At worst, these trainers have angrily cited instances where they believe the wellbeing of their horse and its rider was placed at risk.

Most typically, they’re talking about an initially uncorrected intimidatory drift, resulting in a check to one or more rivals and thus shifting the odds in the intimidator’s favour. That drift often happens as the likeliest winner starts to get the better of its rivals. If the main danger or dangers are crowded on the rails or nudged into a pocket, so much the better.

This is the work of professional sportspeople playing to the umpire’s whistle. If it comes off as intended, the interferer’s horse not only keeps the race but the jockey may not even be penalised. If the stewards decide a ban is warranted, experience says it’s most likely to be judged careless riding – defined as caused by “inattention or misjudgement” – and warrant two to four days’ suspension. Meanwhile, the sufferer might end up third or fourth when he should have been second.

The penalty is likely to increase where there are exacerbating factors – if the interference is sustained, if it occurs next to a rail thus increasing the danger, if more than one horse suffers and is denied prize money or the chance to battle for it, whether directly or indirectly as a result of the interference, if a horse or horses are brought down.

Of course, in making the initial intimidatory move, a rider increases the risk that more serious interference will then take place if the horse ends up shifting further than intended.

The stewards’ official guidance suggests this intimidation is not interpreted as a manoeuvre. It’s a drift, so that classifies it as ‘careless’. To be deemed ‘improper riding’ and thus merit a larger penalty, a rider must cause interference “by some manoeuvre where he knew or ought reasonably to have known that interference would be the result”. When is a drift not a drift? When you know it’s coming, surely?

Back in 2016 as a result of similar concerns about interference, the British Horseracing Authority and Professional Jockeys’ Association worked closely together to amend the guidance and that resulted in increased penalties for interference.

The tariffs for improper riding doubled and the minimum penalty for careless riding became two days. The intention was to increase the deterrent and yet also to make such breaches distinct from marginal cases. An instance of minimal interference was either worthy of at least two days or else it was a caution. No more petty one-day bans.

Paul Struthers, PJA chief executive, referred to this work in the Racing Post last Friday, commenting: “We’re largely aligned with the BHA on the rules and the penalties... The only area where I think we diverge is over the disciplinary panel."

Struthers was responding to Brant Dunshea, the BHA’s chief regulatory officer, who had been motivated to comment by this burgeoning debate and the disciplinary panel’s recent quashing of Robert Havlin’s ten-day ban for careless riding – the latest in what the BHA perceives to be a disproportionate number of successful appeals.

Dunshea also sought to contextualise calls for disqualification – more strictly, demotion – for those who cause chance-ending interference within a global stewarding scene that has moved towards, not away from, Britain’s rules. France, Germany and Japan have all recently ditched their interference policy, which placed demotion on more of a hair-trigger, in favour of ours.

(For an industry that needs the cash, it’s worth noting there would be an issue for the international co-mingling of betting pools if Britain stepped away from the world’s prevailing thinking in this area, too.)

Dunshea also asserted that “our stewards are applying our rules and penalties correctly” but questioned what happens when jockeys appeal against those decisions in front of the independent disciplinary panel, constituted in this form since 2017. He is concerned this dynamic is affecting the morale of his stewarding team, which was restructured and comprehensively trained in the area of enquiry best practice during 2019.

“The success rate of appeals in front of the panel has been significant, with suspensions being overturned the majority of the time,” he said. “It can be challenging for our stewarding teams when the suspensions that they impose are frequently overturned on appeal. It is possible that this, in turn, could have a knock-on effect on rider behaviour.”

Yet the PJA differs from the BHA on more than just the disciplinary panel. Struthers told the Post that “there is a very small number of stewards who have their decisions appealed more often than others and I think that speaks for itself”. He has since considered whether this data is actually more reflective of the quirks of the tracks at which those stewards officiate.

In the Post, he added: “I find it disappointing that the BHA feels the panel is not working because a tiny proportion of the bans are appealed and, of that tiny proportion, there are more successes than failures.”

Struthers explained: “There are 800, maybe 1,000 suspensions a year. We get asked by our members to look at about 200 with a view to appealing and we take forward about 10. If I were the racecourse stewards, that is the way I would look at it, not the other way around."

This might well go some way to explaining why the PJA has a good rate of success but does not entirely account for why, in its three years of existence and under its agreed process of rehearing all matters from scratch, the disciplinary panel has never seen fit to increase a jockey’s interference penalty but only to uphold, quash or decrease the sanction.

Rory Mac Neice, the PJA’s solicitor whose strike rate at appeal has generated this disquiet, has since challenged Dunshea “to make good by providing the evidence he relies on” when saying that “decisions that were incorrectly made in the first place… might somehow affect rider behaviour”.

Of course, this assumes the disciplinary panel always comes to a sounder conclusion than the racecourse stewards. Legally, of course, theirs is usually the final answer – unless the BHA takes that decision to the Appeal Board, something rarely done and only available in certain scenarios. Yet it would be fanciful to imagine that any group of humans is infallible.

The written reasons for the panel’s decisions frequently refer to the greater time they can devote to an incident than is available to the racecourse stewards officiating a raceday. Yet stewards can adjourn an enquiry should they feel an issue requires more time – albeit, in reality, this happens infrequently – and generally work to the contrary principle that the longer they debate the rights and wrongs of a matter, the less motivated they should be to intervene.

Those stewards would also assert their professional skills make them better equipped to read a race, unpick an incident and apportion blame than the largely lay panel members.

Other factors may also be at play, however, in this interface between an enquiry and appeal. Two journalists, who have attended appeals to the disciplinary panel more recently than me, have suggested the BHA’s case could often be presented with greater clarity and detail, that the appellant’s evidence could be more rigorously cross-examined and Mac Neice’s assertions better challenged. Outside advocates cost money, mind – money the BHA lacks more than ever in the current financial environment.

The evidence given by those jockeys present as witnesses, both in racecourse enquiries and at appeal, has also been more widely cited as a frustrating factor. There is, understandably, a strong sense of camaraderie in the weighing room but those hearing their testimony fear this can at times feel like the suppression of much-needed free speech, particularly among those who cannot – yet or ever – claim lofty positions in the profession’s internal hierarchy.

Some jockeys privately dissent, expressing concern that – for instance – Havlin’s ban was entirely quashed. There was even surprise that the PJA sanctioned an appeal against more than just the length of the original penalty. As one rider said to me last week: “The PJA is meant to represent all of us.”

Certain jockeys and those involved in various aspects of the regulatory process have suggested that the wording of the rules too often deters racecourse stewards from finding that ‘improper’ – or even ‘dangerous’ – riding has occurred. Struthers acknowledges many of his members agree with the BHA that interference remains a live issue, but he does not believe – as Blake advocates – that stiffer penalties are the remedy, however.

Individual jockeys, their representative body, trainers, the BHA, the independent disciplinary panel and even the accursed media – all of us – want the same things here: a regulatory system that, as equitably and consistently as is humanly possible, polices the balance between the competitiveness and safety of jockeys riding and promotes the fair-running of races.

All voices need to be heard, without fear or favour, and their points objectively weighed. This should not be too much to ask. Even in racing.

Lydia Hislop is a broadcaster for Racing TV and contributing editor for Tortoise Media. She is also the independent facilitator of the BHA’s Stewarding Consultation Forum, a committee established in December 2018 to support the structural changes in British stewarding and improve communication flow between voluntary stewards and the BHA.