A research study recently published in the journal Animals seems to have strengthened the case against using whips on horses. The study found out that “whips make no difference to horse steering, jockey safety, or even a horse's speed.” Previous studies years ago had already established that whipping horses can potentially be “both painful and dangerous”.
We analysed reports for 126 races involving a total of 1,178 starters (horses and jockeys). These included all 67 hands and heels "whipping-free" races in the period starting January 2017 and ending December 2019. For these, we were able to case-match 59 traditional "whipping-permitted" races.
Thus, we were able to compare the performance of racehorses under both "whipping-free" and "whipping-permitted" conditions in real racing environments, to figure out whether whipping makes horses easier to steer, safer to ride, and/or more likely to win.
Our results indicated no significant differences between horse movement on the course, interference on the course, the frequency of incidents related to jockey behaviour, or average race finishing times.
Put simply, whip use had no impact on steering, safety, or speed. Contrary to longstanding beliefs, whipping racehorses just doesn't work.
Learn more details about this over at Science Alert.
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