In the 1.20 Sedgefield today one fence was omitted. All the jockeys were flagged round the fence and they all duly obliged and continued on their way. On the second circuit same again and all jockeys again obliged and the race run as normal. Ah wait a minute. The flag that was used to direct the jockey on the first circuit was the wrong colour. It was a flag that meant void race. On the second circuit the correct flag was used. Jockeys should only omit a fence if the chequered flag is used. Race void. I wonder if the form will be used to reassess any handicap marks.
......... and all the jockeys received 10 day bans http://www.attheraces.com/article.aspx?hlid=549664&lid=&raceid=&title=Bans+for+jockeys+in+flag+drama&ref=PA+Racing+Feed&nav=home&sub=&day=Tue
The flag waver was absolved from all responsibility but I think his assistant, who gave him the wrong flag to wave, received a reprimand
"We don't know what discretion is, or how to use it, but we do have a book of rules" "There is no rule for flag wavers" ... "No body thought anyone could get that wrong"
I can't believe all bans will not be rescinded on appeal. I am sure the ban was an automatic necessity according to procedure but that it will be rescinded as no one could be that unreasonable or quite frankly stupid.... could they?
So somebody obviously noticed that the wrong flag was used initially. I have read that the jockeys say that they did not look at the colour – they knew the fence was to be omitted so they did as they expected to be ordered. I am not sure how much that exonerates them. I note that ARC have honoured the prize money for the first four and made an ex gratia payment to the other runners, so the only losers at the moment are the jockeys who have lost ten days of their livelihood because the rules say that they should have stopped at the flag. When Lewis Hamilton came to the winning line in Abu Dhabi, that official would presumably have been holding up a white flag not a chequered one... I think I can safely say that the handicapper will not ignore the void race, just as he did not ignore the winner that was disqualified because he should not have been in the race. If you think Sepp Blatter is totally crooked and incompetent at FIFA, wait until you see the old school tie brigade that run racing. No place for commonsense – punish the guy that is driving up and down the country every day risking his neck on moderate horses just to make a living.
Sorry, chaps, but I agree with practically none of the above. The point here, to my mind, is that the yellow flag doesn't simply mean 'void race', it means stop riding, and Rule 66 actually says that a race is void when the yellow 'stop race' flag is waved. In other words, it's a universally-recognised instruction to stop the race at once. (Case in point digression, which I'll agree isn't entirely comparable: some years ago, a neighbour of mine drove out around midnight to collect his teenage son from a function in a town about ten miles away. On the way there, he found a lot of standing water in the road, and decided to come home by a slightly different route. On the return trip, they met temporary lights, set at red. After waiting what he thought was in unreasonably long time (CCTV subsequently established that it was about three minutes) he decided the lights were stuck, or out of order, couldn't see any headlights at the other end of the roadworks section, and very cautiously crossed the lights at about 10mph. And got broadsided by a 4x4 coming across a green light from a road on his left. The lights were actually 4-way control, and the road on the left wasn't visible from where he's stopped. His son, in the passenger seat, was in hospital for about eight weeks, and only a couple of spinal millimetres away from spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair). What I'm saying is that the jockeys may have thought they knew better than the flagman, but you can't ignore a stop-sign just because you believe it's displayed by mistake. They assumed the problem concerned a damaged fence, or maybe an injured horse or jockey: but an old mine-shaft might have opened behind the water-jump, or a nutter might be loose in the enclosures with an AK47. You cannot take it on yourselves to decide that a no-exceptions instruction can be blindeyed. I believe that the BHA were right to impose the ban (and also right to pay the race prize-money, though that's a subsidiary issue) simply because an authority has to send the message that rules - here notified by flags - aren't matters for personal interpretation. Equally, when the appeals are heard, it would be crass to impose maximum penalties. But you can't abandon the principle, and a lot of the criticism seems to me straightforward anti-BHA knee-jerk.
Granted nobody on this forum is going to get a ten day ban for the inference that a yellow flag means a “void race” but it does actually mean “stop riding” and the Rules then dictate that the race is void. From what I have read, the jockeys were aware before the race started that the fence was to be omitted so the man with the flag should have been a formality. There does not appear to be any chance that they could not see the colour/design of the flag, they just ignored it because of what they expected to see. So technically that makes the jockeys guilty because they did not pay proper attention to the signals that they were being given and act upon them; however, whilst they have all been punished the two individuals concerned with holding up the wrong flag appear to have got away with a few words of admonishment for failing to perform their duties correctly. The complete absence of consistency in punishment here makes a mockery of the Rules and the idiots that are responsible for them.
