WHAT do jump jockeys and Tottenham Hotspur have in common? They won’t be competing for any silverware come April.

In fact, I’m regretting not taking up those riding lessons I had planned a few years ago, as I reckon I’d be odds-on to get a ride in the Grand National right about now.

On a serious note, with Cheltenham set to explode into life in just 17 days’ time, we could be facing a jockey crisis come Aintree.

The Festival is the biggest week of the year and, to many jockeys, trainers and owners, a winner there can define a season. If not a career.

So it’s pie in the sky to think that some riders won’t breach the strict new whip rules at the Fez, threat of hefty ban or not.

Jockeys would need balls of granite to tell connections after narrowly losing out in a big race: “I would have won with one more smack of the whip but that would mean I'm banned."

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The whip limit over jumps is now seven, down from eight, and one stroke over that threshold triggers an automatic four-day ban.

That’s bumped up to seven days if a jock goes two over and, heaven forbid, if like Charlotte Jones someone loses the plot and goes four over, it’s disqualification and a two-week ban.

Now remember, if you breach the rules in a Class 1 or 2 race (in other words, any race at Cheltenham) the suspension is DOUBLED.

And that is before we even take ‘over shoulder-height’ and ‘not allowing the horse sufficient time to respond’ jobs into account.

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I’m no longer a betting man, but if I was I’d wager that the stewards are going to be working overtime at the Festival.

In the past, nine smacks would have meant a dressing down and a slap on the wrist – this year it will earn you a fortnight on the sofa.

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The BHA’s new whip review committee meets each Tuesday to dish out whip-related punishments, which then take effect two weeks later.

So any potential bans at Cheltenham will kick-in just nine days before the start of the Grand National meeting in mid-April. 

You can see where this is going, can’t you? 

The situation is so precarious that when one well-known Twitter p*ss-taker claimed that AP McCoy was coming out of retirement because of the huge number of bans, several users actually believed it.

And the rules are causing a particular headache for Irish jocks – whose horses dominate the Grand National entries – given they are used to riding with much more relaxed rules at home.

The butcher’s bill from the first week of the new whip rules made pretty grim reading: 19 jockeys banned for a combined total of 134 days.

It’s a sorry state of affairs and no-one, on either side of the divide, comes out of this well.

The jockey reps and PJA agreed to draconian punishments in order to get rid of the back-hand only rule, so they only have themselves to blame in some respects.

But the BHA have bungled the process from the outset and I bet even they aren’t happy with where we have ended up.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy some riding gear. The prep for the ‘24 National starts now.

Top Marks

I’M officially launching the ‘Mark Johnston For 75 High Holborn’ campaign.

The legendary trainer might not thank me for this, but he is the ideal candidate to replace hapless Julie Harrington as chief of the BHA.

She replaced Nick Rust in 2020 and pretty much nothing has gone right during her two and a half years at the helm.

Johnston doesn’t deal in cliches and soundbites like Harro – he is straight-talking, knows the racing industry inside out and commands huge respect across the sport.

He already has experience of racing politics, having been a BHA board member in the not-too-distant past, and he is the kind of bloke that could unite racing’s warring factions.

He recently handed over his licence to son Charlie, bringing to an end his illustrious training career – whether or not he could be tempted out of semi-retirement is the big question.

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He wouldn’t need to relocate to London from the picturesque North Yorkshire countryside – he would only need to travel to the capital when needed.

Come on Johnno, your sport needs you.

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