Nearly three days on from its astonishingly ill-judged response to the finding that Robbie Dunne had bullied and harassed his fellow rider Bryony Frost over seven months in 2020, the Professional Jockeys’ Association finally stopped digging on Sunday. Frost, it accepted, really had been bullied: on the racecourse, in the weighing room and online. It wasn’t just a feeling after all.
The PJA’s splenetic statement ran to nearly 1,000 words, most of which had apparently been written for the benefit of any or every jump jockey bar the one it should have been doing its utmost to support.
It railed at the British Horseracing Authority counsel Louis Weston’s claim of a “rancid” weighing-room culture, accused the independent panel of bias without offering any evidence to back up their claim, and generally sought to share the blame for Frost’s shocking treatment at the hands of another PJA member as widely as possible. David Bass, meanwhile, the PJA’s jump jockey president, suggested that “Bryony and Robbie have been let down by the BHA”.
The possibility that PJA members as a whole had been let down by Dunne did not seem to cross anyone’s mind. And this came just hours after the panel had at least partially accepted Weston’s warnings about weighing-room culture, when Brian Barker, its chair, expressed “real concern” about a “deep-rooted, coercive” culture which is “not conducive to the good health and development of modern-day race-riding”.
A point that was missed in the PJA’s kneejerk response is that no one is claiming that the riders’ long-standing practice of self-policing disputes behind closed doors means that deliberate bullying is either excused or condoned. What the Dunne case does show, however, is that it can allow abuse to go undetected or overlooked, which is unacceptable in any workplace, no matter how unique.
Plumpton 12.30 Sonning 1.00 For Pleasure 1.30 Whistleinthedark 2.00 Dr Kananga 2.30 Karakoram 3.00 Fenrir Binding 3.30 Hey Frankie
Chelmsford City 1.15 Bonita B 1.45 Atheby 2.15 Sixth Street 2.45 Fauvette (nb) 3.15 Suzi’s Connoisseur 3.45 Atalanta Breeze (nap) 4.15 Peripeteia
Wolverhampton 4.00 Trusty Rusty 4.30 Magical Dias 5.00 International Law 5.30 Sparkle In His Eye 6.00 Hooflepuff 6.30 Screaming Petrus 7.00 Desert Emperor 7.30 Eagle One
For most jockeys, the weighing room is clearly a safe, welcoming environment where riders collectively share the daily challenges of a profession that is dangerous and gruelling, but also an exhilarating, adrenalin-fuelled way of life. But at the same time, they are not, and cannot be, team players in the manner of a football club’s dressing room. Jockeys are colleagues and also often friends, but they are individuals too, in a fiercely competitive sport. They compete race-by-race and also month-by-month, looking to build a career in the knowledge that one winning ride could open a door that leads to many more.
Every weighing room also includes riders, both male and female, with a wide range of age, experience and success. There is obvious potential for jealousy, grudges and rivalries, and if there is also a sense that some have earned the right to rebuke and discipline others, the potential for that culture to be exploited by a bully should be obvious.
Bullies are angry and insecure individuals who try to deal with their frustrations by taking them out on others. It may or may not be a coincidence that Dunne’s chosen target was not simply a female rider, but the most successful female rider in the room.
Catterick Bridge 12.15 Coup De Gold, 12.45 Brorson, 1.15 Melanamix, 1.45 Krypton Gold, 2.15 Vee Dancer, 2.45 Out On The Tear (nb), 3.15 Ballymist
Wincanton 12.30 Braveheart, 1.00 Our Power (nap), 1.30 Brief Times, 2.00 Rainyday Woman, 2.30 Peur De Rien, 3.00 Merry Mistress, 3.30 Abbey Street
Newcastle 4.00 Tie A Yellowribbon, 4.30 Alrehb, 5.00 Muveran, 5.30 Pallas Lord, 6.00 Firmament, 6.30 Leap Abroad, 7.00 Oriental Lilly, 7.30 Kilconquhar
Dunne’s evidence to the panel was riddled with contradictions. His witness statement, for instance, claimed that until a post-race incident at Stratford in July 2020, when he said that frustration with what he perceived to be shortcomings in Frost’s riding style boiled over, his relationship with her had been “good or perfect”.
Yet as Weston showed in an excruciating exchange for the rider, he had singled her out for abuse in a tweet in April 2020 which mentioned only Yala Enki, Frost’s “ride” in the Virtual Grand National, but was clearly understood by his followers – fellow jockeys no doubt included – to be a deliberate dig at Frost.
The weighing-room culture did not cause Dunne to be a bully, but it allowed his bullying to go unchallenged until Frost had the courage to stand up to him. If that point too is eventually accepted by those jockeys who have seemingly shunned Frost for daring to speak out, there will surely be a way to address the current culture’s flaws, without sacrificing the shared experience that so many riders rightly cherish.
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