The culture of the weighing room needs to move with the times

In the first such case for 20 years, former rider Freddy Tylicki, paralysed and wheelchair-bound since his mount Nellie Dean clipped heels in a Kempton Flat race with Madame Butterfly, ridden by Graham Gibbons, has been suing Gibbons for £6 million in the High Court. Arguments have centred on whether Gibbons made a fractional misjudgment in an ambitious manoeuvre or whether he showed a punishable disregard for his colleagues’ safety.

It hasn’t helped racing’s image that Gibbons is a jockey with a history of drink problems and that former champion jockey Jim Crowley testified that he smelled alcohol on Gibbons’s breath that day. Judgment will come before Christmas and while the racing world has immense sympathy for Tylicki, if his case succeeds there could be wide ramifications for the future of a sport in which riders often have to make split-second decisions. Will we still praise a rider and his horse for having the ‘courage’ to go for a narrow gap? Will they still dare try?

Even bigger headlines have been caused by the British Horseracing Authority’s disciplinary panel hearing into jumps rider Bryony Frost’s complaint of bullying and harassment by her fellow rider Robbie Dunne.