Should we ban whips??

[teapot]

And in time they learn to look before they step out.

But that’s education, something the sport as a whole doesn’t seem to want to invest in. Decent education, beginning with overhauling the BHS system so every instructor knows how to train a young horse and retrain an older one. So people have other things in their toolboxes than whip and spur, from grassroots level to the very top. We can stop selling whips but people will use sticks or pipe or whatever they have to hand. That won’t change things. Education changes things.

Bottom line, and frankly the bigger issue, is that education and training as a whole needs to be valued a heck of a lot more in the industry (like it used to be). People want to compete, have quick fixes, and social media likes. Not spending money on lessons, where for the vast majority of the time they'll be learning and relarning the basics, the 'dull' stuff, the week in week out repetiive minor tweaks that actually makes the improvements and gets the results long term. The sooner the UK has a system like the Germans or the French, the better, otherwise mediocrity will just continue to breed mediocrity. I know of coaches who are teaching teenagers who are literally only interested in what it'll look like on Tiktok, and that's appeared since I left the industry in 2022.

On exams, have you trained for or taken the higher level exams? Stage 4 and Stage 5 already do what you're suggesting. Problem is access to that level of training either privately or through centres is declining rapidly, it's seen as a huge jump from Stage 3 (which most people could get with some fine tuning I feel), and it requires a huge committment. The BHS has recently tweaked down the level of the current business management side of the Stable Managers (BHSI/Stage 5 level) exam because some at the top felt it too detailed/too much/pass rate was too low (and I know that because I was invited to a feedback session on the matter), so how would you propose ensuring everyone took those exams to gain the knowledge and experience?

Not everyone goes down that route either, and there are plenty of people out there coaching with zero quals/decent training, and plenty of people lapping it up. A bit of regulation over coaching would be a start. Everything's so half arsed in the UK.