No Whipping at Santa Anita
 

The Guardian is reporting that Santa Anita is eliminating the whip except in the case of safety issues. I can't confirm another source for the story.




https://www.theguardian.com/sport/bl...-park-whip-ban

Have fun playing Santa Anita

Wasn't that part of the deal they made with PETA?

Now, when a rider goes to the whip out of habit in the mist of a race, what happens?

DQ, or just fine the rider?

My understanding is they will have to watch reruns of Hank Goldberg picking winners!! :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

They need to move the BC

Why not do away with the racing part altogether?

Why not show the horses being saddled, and then do a post parade followed by warmups?

While this is happening the public would be betting on the outcome.

But instead of an actual race to determine the outcome:

After warmups, at post time, ring a bell to signal the close of betting. Then have the riders send the field once around the track at a slow gallop --

From there have the stewards judge the horses (subjectively) on different attributes like best turned out, coat, dapples, muscle mass, comportment, etc.

Afterwards, give the stewards a few minutes to finish filling out their scorecards.

Then collect the scorecards and scan them into the tote system. At which point the scores could be tabulated to determine first place, second place, third place, etc.

Have the placing judges double check the scorecards and declare the contest official. Then post the results and payoffs.

Isn't that where we are headed? :rolleyes:



-jp

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Could we not make it the horse with the best Vet record is the winner, That would speed things up.:confused:

bad bad day for racing. beginning of the end

LOLOLO


The start is the beginning of the end.

Glad that racing isn't based on ya'll's involvement. 3 weeks without Santa Anita and the Game is over. Ya'll broke wallets needed a break anyway.

My personal view of whipping is that if they would simply enforce rules on excessive use of the whip strictly, it would be fine. Everyone knows the difference between hitting a horse a couple of times to keep him straight or to coax her to start her run, and beating a tired horse 12 times in the stretch as he drops back. One is proper horsemanship, the other is animal abuse. And the sport should be against animal abuse whenever possible.

The Santa Anita rule looks overbroad.

And by the way, I am known here as a California homer, but I kinda of agree with the idea of moving the BC at this point. We are still in quite a mess, and there's a nonzero possibility that Santa Anita may fall back into a crisis. I am sure Churchill can take the BC on short notice, and that would probably be a good idea for the health of the sport. They could give the BC back to Santa Anita if/when it is clear that the track has its house in order.

i like it

the whip in horse racing is archaic, at best

as long as everyone's on a level playing field, what's the problem?

I'm a Santa Anita Homer too and they really got stupid in this case. People can say what they want about Stronich , but he has taken good care of an old facility that needed repairs when he bought it. He got screwed when they forced synthetic tracks on him in California. This has been blown way out of proportions and they needed to tell Peta to STFU. The only thing I would like to see is a carry no whip rule. Keep the medication and stop the milkshakes. When I started as fan horses races or breezed every 5 to 7 days. Hay Oats and water along with a generous tax write-off .

I think some people need to watch a couple dozen head on views down the stretch. Horses drift back and forth all the time. Most of the time the whip is what keeps them from wiping out the horse next to them or the rail, etc. without a whip a jock will have to check up and physically yank a horses head over to prevent that. Which I'm fine with but then bettors will be pissed as hell and yelling the jock was crooked and took the horse back lol. This is going to be extremely interesting