The culture of the weighing room needs to move with the times
In the first such case for 20 years, former rider Freddy Tylicki, paralysed and wheelchair-bound since his mount Nellie Dean clipped heels in a Kempton Flat race with Madame Butterfly, ridden by Graham Gibbons, has been suing Gibbons for £6 million in the High Court. Arguments have centred on whether Gibbons made a fractional misjudgment in an ambitious manoeuvre or whether he showed a punishable disregard for his colleagues’ safety. It hasn’t helped racing’s image that Gibbons is a jockey with a history of drink problems and that former champion jockey Jim Crowley testified that he smelled alcohol on Gibbons’s breath that day. Judgment will come before Christmas and while
