by Bob Duff

It was Devo that suggested you should Whip It, Whip It Good, while the Rolling Stones were the ones debating about what happens When The Whip Comes Down.

So evidently, were some researchers in Sweden. And the results that their study has come up with defy all the logic and reasoning that’s been placed into going to the whip down the stretch of a harness race.

The study, published in the research journal Frontiers in Animal Science, found that not only doesn’t going to the whip cause a horse to increase speed at a key moment in the race, it in fact more often than not leads to deceleration of the horse.

Ultimately, the goal of the researchers was “to investigate if finishing position among top three horses is affected by whip use, the effect of whip strikes on changes in speed at the end of trotting races, and if whip strikes potentially comply with the training principle of negative reinforcement.”

To that end, researchers from the Swedish Trotting Association and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences combined forces to look into the outcomes of the top three finishers in the stretch drive of 16 different Swedish trotting races held in 2018 and 2019.

The study group acknowledged the elephant in the room, that the use of the whip in equine sports is “intensely debated from a horse welfare perspective and putting the equine sports’ social license to operate at risk.”

The results of this study certainly aren’t going to help bolster the argument of the pro-whip lobby.

“There is a possibility that the horses are, in fact, trained to slow down when being struck, even though drivers may not be aware of this,” the study found.

Traditionally, whipping is viewed within the industry as a method to get the horse’s attention in order to make them go faster.

“The expected behavioral reaction to a whip strike at the end of a trotting race is for the horse to respond with acceleration,” the study noted.

HOW THE STUDY WORKED

During the study, the three horses finishing in the top three in the selected races were observed during the last 800 meters of the race. Those last 800 meters were sectioned in four parts – 0-100 m, 100-200 m, 200-400 m, and 400-800 m to the finish line.

A whip strike was defined as a rapid movement of the driver’s hand holding the whip, and the whip making contact with the horse.

WHAT THE OUTCOME OF THE STUDY DISPLAYED

During the 16 races studied, the top three horses were the recipients of a combined total of 268 strikes of the whip.

The top three horses in 16 races were studied. In total, 268 strikes with the whip were recorded. Of these 268 strikes, 29 strikes were received at 800-400 meters before the finish line. Another 56 strikes came at 400-200 meters before the finish line. There were 93 strikes with 200-100 meters left in the race and 90 strikes over the last 100 meters of the race.

The number of strikes per horse ranged from 0 to 16, with a mean average of 5.6 strikes per horse. Interestingly, five of the horses studied did not receive any strikes. These five horses finished first (two horses), second (two horses), or third (one horse). The horse receiving the most strikes (16) finished second.

There was no positive indication displaying that by a driver going to the whip, horses were reacting with an uptick in speed. In fact, more often than not, the response of the horse to the whip being applied was a reduction in speed.

Researchers discovered that at the three-second mark after the whip strike, there was a tendency for the horse to actually slow down. This effect was displayed with more consistency the closer the horse drew toward the finishing line.

That data unearthed indicated that striking horses in this situation is completely without value and that it may even be teaching the horses to slow down when receiving a whip strike. Since fatigued horses are generally tiring at the end of the race, a driver will often cease whipping the horse if it continues to slow.

A theory put forth by this research is that when this happens, the message that the horse may be perceiving is that the use of the whip is designed to tell them to reduce speed. Effectively, this decision may be working as negative reinforcement, training the horse to view the use of the whip as an indication that they are to slow down.

Overall, the conclusions reached by the study’s authors certainly left the whipping of racehorses in a very untenable position.

“In the light of these findings, whip strikes to encourage trotting horses to run faster at the end of a race seems to be pointless and should be avoided from a horse welfare perspective,” the study noted.