Whips aren't in the race when it comes to hurting horses
The Age
Wednesday November 11, 2009
The reality is that speed and hard tracks hurt horses, not whips. THE best thing about jockey "whips" is that they aren't, really. Not real whips, that is. Not the instruments of pain used for corporal punishment on humans in some countries. Not the cat-o'-nine-tails that flayed the skin from men's backs in the Royal Navy's days of "rum, sodomy and the lash". Not the birch used in living memory to flog Australian prisoners.And not the canes they used on us at Almost Grammar School. The first headmaster imported dozens of them when he arrived in the 1960s. His mission: to prevent Lord of the Flies in the land of the flies. For a decade or two, his canes struck fear and loathing into miserable sinners.Apart from the boss, the appointed hitmen were a petrol-head housemaster who later became a bishop, and a Yorkshireman who believed in muscular Christianity.It is tempting to say €” as one federal cabinet minister recently has €” that we were always whipped on flimsy pretexts. This was not strictly true, but we were sometimes whipped in flimsy pyjamas.Pyjama caning was even more painful than in uniform. The purple bruises lasted a month; sometimes the cuts oozed blood. Once, a recidivist returned with a cut under his eye from a hooked swing and a whippy cane that curled around his bum and hit his cheek. It could have taken out his eye.All of which is a way of twisting the Croc Dundee line ("That's not a whip: this is a whip") to get a little perspective on the more hysterical denunciations of jockey whips.The new padded whip is a good idea €” gentle compared with the canes used on schoolboys for far too long. A horse, after all, is a thick-skinned beast 10 times a jockey's weight €” a robust animal ready to fight rival horses (and predators) with teeth and hooves. A horse kick that can kill a person puts a little padded stick in a rosier light.And there are other things to consider. The main one is this: no sane person inflicts gratuitous pain on animals. Not only is it repugnant, it doesn't work.Take the stockwhip, with its long "fall" and leather lash: it is capable of being used to inflict pain but usually isn't, any more than a chef's knife is for stabbing diners or a cricket bat for bashing bowlers.Cracking a stockwhip is a good way to stop or turn a cow. Scary noise works well with flighty herd animals. Farmers working sheep in yards often use tin-can rattles to make a noise without hollering all day.The idea is to reduce distress because distress is counter-productive. A sheepdog that barks is useful but one that bites is muzzled or shot. Livestock are too valuable to hurt.And talking of valuable livestock, they don't come any more expensive than the thoroughbred horse. No one pays between $5000 and $5 million for a yearling with a pedigree purer than the royal family's just to have it abused. Training fees for a horse could pay for two kids at boarding school.This brings us back to jockeys and the featherweight padded rod that is their tool of trade, along with wafer saddles that mean they need the balance and nerve of acrobats working without nets €” and travelling at about 60 km/h.The main case against whips €” and valid, from a PR viewpoint €” is that vigorous use at the finish looks bad to an audience whose idea of animal welfare is feeding their cat enough tinned fish to supply an African village.For a growing number of watchers €” and not only hysterical animal rights campaigners €” the perception of cruelty might obscure the reality.The reality is this: of all the things that hurt racehorses, whips aren't in the race. Racehorses, expertly inbred for fast-twitch muscles, brave hearts and big lungs, are only ever a step from breaking down. Even those not raced as two-year-olds, when young bones are most vulnerable, are notoriously liable to "go wrong". Speed and hard tracks hurt horses, not whips.Injury, of course, happens to all athletes: every season, footballers are hurt by an ever-faster game. Such injuries are painful, and can end careers. The difference is that broken-down horses mostly have dimmer futures than ex-footballers. Ironically, ex-racehorses can end up inside the pets of the animal-loving public €” an entirely rational fate, if a sad one.But of all the sad endings on the racetrack, none has anything to do with jockeys' little leather batons. Ever seen a horse return to scale covered in lash marks like a convict after a flogging? No. If it did, it would be on YouTube.So, as a whipping survivor and horse lover, I say we should not beat ourselves up. Padded jockey whips are not much different from the rolled-up newspaper nice folk use to educate pups: they make a noise without doing any harm.If anyone with a contrary view is willing to put up donations for an animal shelter, here's a challenge: for $100 a stroke you can hit me with a padded jockey whip until I get bored.But not in pyjamas.
© 2009 The Age
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