France Lowers Number of Permitted Whip Strikes to Four

France Galop has announced that the permitted number of strikes with the whip in both flat and jumps races will be reduced from five to four, starting May 1. 

It is the third reduction in the number in a little more than six years, during which time the permitted total will have effectively been halved. 

A bedding-in period of two months will start March 1, at the end of which the sanctions for breaking the rule will be beefed up, with a six-day ban becoming the entry point for a first offense when going three over the limit. 

The new rules retain the element of harsher penalties in group races, with a five-day suspension for five or six hits and a minimum of 10 days for seven or more. But in an effort to provide a level playing field between French-based and foreign jockeys in such major events, the extra sanctions applied to repeat offenses will not apply in group races. 

There are few stylistic changes to the new rule, with stewards still empowered to clamp down on any use of the whip where the elbow is raised above shoulder height or where a jockey persists with using it once reasonable hope of earning prize money or passing other horses is deemed to have gone. But in one interesting addition, any slap down the neck or shoulder when a jockey does not have both hands on the reins will count towards the four-stroke total. 

During the bedding-in period, stewards will warn jockeys if they exceed what will become the new limit, while coaching and seminars will be available in major training centers and at racing schools.

France has remained at a substantially lower limit than Britain and Ireland ever since the first of its recent series of decreases in 2017, though France Galop stewards have stopped short of matching their neighbors in Germany, where it was announced in December that the limit would go from five down to three strokes. 

The new BHA proposal of six on the flat and seven over jumps, which has caused a great deal of debate in Britain, had brought the two countries closer together, but France Galop president Edouard de Rothschild has restated on a number of occasions that a progressive reduction in the number of permitted strikes was in the long-term interest of improving the sport's image with the public. 

There is no provision in the new French rules for a horse to be disqualified for serious transgressions.