The down-at-heel trainer, ever-hopeful owner and hard-core punter would need no convincing: if a jockey’s flourish of the whip is going to get their horse over the line in a close one then, by all means Mr Pint-sized Pilot, go ahead and start flailing away. If using the shillalegh means the difference between a prizemoney collect and an empty pocket, it’s a no-brainer: don’t spare the horse.
But, increasingly, the pacificists, animal lovers, tree huggers, bilby savers and plain old regular families are growing agitated. They don’t like horses being whipped, and they don’t care whether it’s done in a tight race or not. They think it’s barbaric and cruel, no better than fox hunting or hare coursing.
The animal welfare lobby is not one to be trifled with. And after years of tolerating, and defending, the practice of whipping horses, the racing industry is starting to listen to this groundswell of opposition.
Yet the ’traditionalists’ are unhappy about the do-gooders’ meddling. They say racing has survived for decades with jockeys using whips. They say no 600-kilogram horse is going to be hurt by a 35-cm length of fibreglass with a folded piece of leather at the end. Anyway, why would a trainer or owner ever sanction cruelty to a beast they own and love (and one day might earn them some money)?
Top-line hoop Craig Newitt is from the old guard. He loves using the persuader to get his mount home. And it was his vigorous use of the whip on Pre Eminence when winning the Norman Robinson Stakes at Caulfield last Saturday which set off this latest conflagration.
Unfazed by the controversy he’s caused, Newitt has said he’ll be flailing away again tomorrow, if that means getting his ride in the Cox Plate, Alamosa, into a position to win Australia’s premier weight-for-age event. ”The harder you ride him, the better he’ll go,” Newitt told the Herald-Sun. ”You’ve got to stand over him.”
So that, neatly encapsulated, is the dilemma facing Racing Victoria stewards as they ponder a solution to this increasingly thorny issue. How to mediate between racing’s old established ways and the sensitive new order; the sport’s traditions and the community’s sensibilities; regular race-goers and the Spring Carnival casuals; life-long horsemen and urban animal lovers?
