“There is simply no excuse for using the whip four times or more above the permitted level [of six],” Brant Dunshea, the British Horseracing Authority’s chief regulatory officer, said on Tuesday, after the regulator’s whip review committee had disqualified Alphonse Le Grande and Jamie Powell from first place in the Cesarewitch Handicap at Newmarket on Saturday. “[Disqualification] sends a clear message that we do not tolerate misuse of the whip.”
But if it is not excusable then the fact that Powell has now been stripped of the most valuable and high-profile success of his career is, to some extent at least, explicable.
