YOU get to hear the same phrases in racing over and over again and I fear, after the BHA got an easy ride through Cheltenham with nothing like the amoint of feared whip bans or headlines, now that the flat season has begun, we are back to where we started and a lot more are likely.

The phrase “without giving his mount time to respond” is likely to become a familiar phrase in many bans as the flat needs more rapid reactions over the shorter distance. Hurdlers and chasers naturally do take time to adjust and increase their stride and/or pace at the end of a race, flat racers on decent ground, over sprint distances, need to respond and quicken in a stride or two.

The rules, so unnecessary in the first place, are likely to be tinkered with again and, at the recent rate of bans, it seems possible some high profile riders may well miss big Group 1 rides.

Even the ride on Cherie D’Am by Harry Skelton at Uttoxeter last Saturday which got a four-day ban last week, on a green bumper winner, where he used the whip more for encouragement, needing to keep it moving, would barely have registered as one that needed punishment previousiously.

RACE REPORT: shaken up to lead under 3f out, soon clear, pushed along and ran green from under 2f out, kept on strongly.

WHIP COMMITTEE REPORT: Harry Skelton, the rider of the winner, CHERIE D’AM, was found to have used his whip excessively down the shoulder in the backhand for encouragement (?) with his hands on the reins in the home straight.

Teahupoo hullabaloo

IT wouldn’t be the intention to pull the old Britain v Ireland injustices from the washing again but I would be in the camp that considered the reversal on appeal of the Cheltenham stewards’ original switching of the placing for the Stayers’ Hurdle to be unfair.

It’s hard not to believe that without the interference from Dashel Drasher moving left and then right, that Teahupoo and Davy Russell would not have pulled back that three-quarters of a length deficit.