Terry Finley Calls on Jockeys to Lead Way, Advocate for Whip Reform on Thoroughbred People Podcast

Appearing on the TDN's new “Thoroughbred People with Patty Wolfe” podcast, West Point Thoroughbreds' Terry Finley reached out to North American jockeys and called on them to support efforts to wean the sport off the practice of riders being allowed to strike horses with the whip. The Guild has never publicly supported any proposals to reduce the use of the whip.

Finley made a plea to Jockeys' Guild Chairman John Velazquez, asking him to encourage the Guild to back a movement to adopt the experimental rules now in place at Woodbine. Currently, Woodbine jockeys are not allowed to cock their whips and strike horses with an overhand motion and can only hit them underhanded.

“I'll talk right here and now to Johnny V.,” Finley said. “There are very few people that I respect more inside or outside the industry. Johnny, you are a leader. You have done an incredible job as the leader of the Jockeys' Guild. I really believe, and a lot of my partners also believe, that this is a golden opportunity for you to support the experiment that is going on at Woodbine. If you want my input, and I don't know if you do, I would do this for a year and not even talk about it until the calendar turned into 2021. I think we will all be pleasantly surprised. The world won't fall apart and we'll be sending a much better signal to the public, our fans and the fans of the future.”

Finley said that he had a change of mind about whipping when visiting Las Vegas with a crew of classmates from his alma mater, West Point.

“We were watching a race from Belmont and I got all of them to the windows in the simulcast center,” he said. “We had won race. They all call me 'Fin-Dog' and one of my best friends says, 'Jesus Christ, Fin-Dog, they are beating the shit out of those horses.' I didn't know how to respond. I felt like a schmuck. Here's this business that I beat the drum for so much, then I had to hear a dear friend say that about it to me and in front of everybody. That really got me thinking about this issue.”

Finley also rejected the idea that the solution regarding the whip is to better educate the public and to get across the message that the whip does not hurt the animal.

“What I respectfully disagree with is when they say that we should keep things the way they are and should just educate the public more,” he said. “I will tell you there's nothing you will be able to do when there's a little girl on the apron at Saratoga by the eighth pole and she hears (the sound of whipping) and looks up and says 'Daddy, they are beating those horses.' What kind of education platform can you possibly have that would impact that little girl?”

Finley's take on the whip was part of an overall theme where, in the podcast, he called on the industry to continue to work feverishly to solve its safety problems. Putting an optimistic spin on racing's situation, Finley said that racing's problems in 2019 will some day be seen as something that, inevitably, changed the sport for the better.

“Every day we have to think and act in a prudent way and take care of our business,” he said. “If we do that, the cumulative effect in two or there years will be that we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We'll look back and we'll look at 2019 as a watershed year that instigated the change for better in our industry. I am going to do everything I can and so will my team. We have vowed to do everything we can to play our part. We have the problems identified. The finger pointing is done. Let's take action. Let's get after this thing.”

To listen to the podcast, click here. It is also available via Apple podcasts on your iPhone or iPad.

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