DEL MAR — Thoroughbred racing and its regulators have enacted rule changes in recent years to limit jockeys’ use of whips, capping the number, timing and ferocity of strikes in an apparently productive effort to protect horses from pain, welts and cuts.
Now it’s the enforcement of those rules that is leaving a mark.
As sport’s finest gather at Del Mar this week for the Breeders’ Cup races Friday and Saturday, it is split over the validity of the decision by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority to suspend national wins leader Paco Lopez for six months for repeated violations of whip rules.
The debate extends to broader questions about the usefulness of restricting riders’ use of whips on the track, where that sight and sound was part of the drama of stretch duels for well over a century.
After Lopez’s suspension was announced in September, leaders of the Jockeys’ Guild were quick to complain publicly about the length of Lopez’s suspension and the reasoning behind it.
“It’s just too much,” Hall of Famer Mike Smith, whose Breeders’ Cup mounts include the popular fillies Kopion in the Sprint and Tamara in the Filly & Mare Sprint, said in video posted on X by the Jockeys’ Guild. “The crop (whip) rule has to be changed. These penalties have to be changed. We have to come to a happy medium somehow, some way.”
Others in the racing industry echoed the jockeys’ feelings.
“I don’t know the extent of everything that went on with Paco, but to levy a sanction like that against a guy … it puts the guy out of business,” Jeff Mullins, the Santa Anita-based trainer who has Intrepido in the Juvenile, said in an interview. “What’s he going to do?”
But still others said the rules and the punishment are justified.
“We have specific rules, and if you’re not going meet those rules and you’re going to arguably flaunt them continually, there should be a significant penalty for that,” Dr. Dionne Benson, chief veterinary officer for The Stronach Group Racing and Gaming, said in an interview in her office at Santa Anita.
Lisa Lazarus, CEO of HISA, said she hopes Lopez gets the message.
“I hope this is the moment where Paco becomes more thoughtful about his conduct and there are some changes,” Lazarus said in an interview Wednesday at Del Mar. “But when you’re inside this racing world, it’s sometimes hard to understand how the public perceives the crop.”
To whip or not to whip
The debate is over the particulars of the Lopez case and the general issue of how much whipping should be restricted at a time when questions about the treatment of racehorses pose a public-relations problem for the sport, most acutely following the dozens of deaths, mostly from limb injuries, in racing and training at Santa Anita in the winter of 2019.
Maybe the disagreements are natural, given how ingrained whip use is in racing history.
“Years back, if a rider carried a stick, they were expected to use it,” said Tom Ward, California’s senior racetrack steward, now officiating at Los Alamitos’ night quarter-horse and thoroughbred racing. “In quarter horses, you could be fined if you carried a whip and didn’t use it – even if you won.”
In 2015, jockey Victor Espinoza used his whip more than 30 times to drive Triple Crown winner American Pharoah to his one-length victory in the Kentucky Derby. Espinoza’s actions drew criticism, but they brought no sanctions from Kentucky stewards.
That was before California and other states, and then HISA, instituted limits. Now rules prohibit – among other things – more than six whip strikes by a jockey during a race, more than two strikes in a row without a pause to give the horse a chance to respond, any strikes after a horse clearly has given up, and raising the whip hand above the helmet. In addition, rule changes have altered whips themselves, making them softer and stiffer.
“I can remember when I started in this industry, we would sometimes see welts on horses,” Benson said. “I can’t remember seeing (them lately).”
One other change, for image purposes: Whips now are officially referred to, euphemistically, as “crops.”
Benson said she thought Hall of Fame jockeys of past generations would have liked to compete under the current restrictions, because the best were skilled enough to draw out horses’ top efforts with their hands and legs instead of their whips.
But Laffit Pincay, America’s greatest living jockey, who retired in 2003 with a then-record 9,530 victories, said he has “never agreed with” restrictions.
“It’s a sport. The name of the game is winning,” Pincay said in a phone interview. “I think it’s silly now that you come down the stretch and you have to be counting how many times you’re going to hit your horse.”
He didn’t whip a horse if he could tell that individual would resent it, Pincay said. But he remembers big races he wouldn’t have won without the response a horse gave him because of the whip. He cites the 1985 Santa Anita Derby, Skywalker and Pincay were passed by Fast Account and Gary Stevens and appeared beaten – before Pincay went to a left-handed whip at least 11 times in the final furlong, rousing Skywalker to a photo-finish victory.
Lopez’s suspension
Lopez, 40, was leading the nation in 2025 with 300 race victories and had just won his seventh consecutive riding title at Monmouth Park in New Jersey when he was suspended for what HISA called “a pattern of disregard for HISA’s rules.” With one Breeders’ Cup winner in his career – Roy H in the 2018 Sprint – he is not considered a top-notch jockey. He has a long list of suspensions related to whips and racing infractions.
In the round of penalties in question now, Lopez originally was suspended indefinitely by HISA in December 2024 for striking a then-2-year-old colt named National Law in the head and neck with his whip after the horse ran erratically on the way to a maiden victory at Parx racetrack near Philadelphia. Lopez apologized publicly and was allowed to resume riding in January, only to violate terms of his conditional reinstatement, HISA officials said, by breaking a rule by raising his wrist above his head in the act of whipping a horse.
Lopez’s attorney, Drew Mollica, said the six-month suspension was unjustified because the jockey’s latest violations are unrelated to the National Law incident and had already drawn sanctions by track stewards.
But Lazarus said this week the six-month suspension was an automatic result of an agreement Lopez made with the HISA CEO to reduce his suspension for the National Law transgression, and it was because of the sheer number of subsequent violations.
The six-month suspension was applauded by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a leading critic of racing.
“Lopez wins by beating the horses and breaking the rules,” PETA senior vice president Kathy Guillermo said on the organization’s website. “This suspension should make him rethink the abuse, and PETA is grateful to HISA for handing down this stiff penalty.”
No easy solution
Jockeys’ Guild leaders, while opposing the six-month suspension, agreed Lopez deserved some punishment. At the same time, the jockeys’ trade association asked for an “emergency meeting” with HISA leaders to discuss whip-rule changes.
Meanwhile, the Lopez situation grew more complicated when he was named to ride horses this week at Delta Downs in Louisiana, one of the states where lawsuits have kept HISA from having jurisdiction.
It’s all likely to remain complicated.
Some in the sport see a day when jockeys will be allowed to carry whips only for use to command a horse’s attention and avoid danger, not to encourage a horse to run faster.
“I think there will be discussions going on regarding the whip until the day there are no whips,” said Ward, the veteran steward. “Which may not be a bad thing.”
But Pincay said barring the use of whips “would be a terrible idea.”
“Races are going to be so uniform then. Only the push-button horses are going to win. Some horses, you have to wake them up during a race,” he said.
Trainer Michael McCarthy, who has Journalism in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, said he thinks the limit is “fine where we are at right now.”
“I think the crop has become more of an aid than anything else with the way (they’re) designed today,” McCarthy said. “They’re designed just to sort of get their attention and use more for directing and schooling than they are really kind of getting a burst.”
Nationally, the future of whipping rules and a scale of penalties for violations could be decided by a HISA committee, as was the controversial current six-strike limit.
“It’s been, probably, one of the most if not the most heavily debated and discussed rules,” Lazarus said. “I think what you’re always trying to find that happy medium, preserving the tradition of the sport, and (recognize) innovation and new social mores in an evolving society. And you can’t ignore either.”