Jockeys bridle at mobile phone ban

Shippy Ellis, the jockeys' agent whose roster includes the former champion Kevin Darley, said yesterday that new Jockey Club rules banning riders from using mobile phones could be a breach of employment law. "If not being able to use phones prevents them from getting employment," Ellis said, "the Jockey Club could be on a tricky thing."

The life of a modern agent revolves around the phone, particularly in the summer when evening meetings add to the logistical problems of organising a jockey's schedule. Getting hold of a rider at short notice when a spare booking suddenly appears is something agents take for granted.

But the new rules, aimed at preventing privileged and valuable information from leaking out of the weighing-room during racing, will prevent any rider using a mobile on-course during racing hours. The restriction, to be policed by a team of weighing-room security officers, is expected to come into force in May or June.

The club may yet need to overcome a legal hurdle, though, if the riders as a whole decide that the imposition of doing without their mobiles is not compensated for by the positive image that comes with tighter security.

"I suspect in this day and age that irrespective of any regulations, if jockeys see it as a restriction of trade then they would have a case," Ellis said yesterday. "Jockeys are licensed by the Jockey Club but are also self-employed. If it isn't a restriction of trade, it's a suppression of trade."

Ellis added: "If a trainer calls me and says his jockey won't get to an evening meeting at Hamilton on time, so can my jockey ride the horse, I need to make sure he gets away from an afternoon meeting . . . They [the Jockey Club] say they will make phones available, but I remember the days before mobile phones and I've been in this job long enough to know how difficult it is."

One rider unlikely to be troubling his agent much in the next few weeks is Shane Kelly, who faces a long suspension when he goes before the club's disciplinary committee today.

Kelly was referred to Portman Square by the Wolverhampton stewards for misuse of the whip on Notanother in a maiden race on January 13. Since he has already been suspended for 22 days for whip offences in the past 12 months, he can expect a further ban of at least 14 days today.

Starting prices were returned on every race in Britain yesterday, after racecourse bookmakers decided to suspend their campaign of market-framing "strikes" in protest at new data-rights charges. "We have made our point," one bookie said.

Meanwhile, Sandown racegoers will be denied the spectacle of watching Baracouda try to give almost two stone all round in the Scoop6 Handicap Hurdle, as the reigning champion stayer's trainer François Doumen yesterday decided against risking bad weather to give him his British handicap debut on Saturday.

JP McManus's eight-year-old was rated at 168 and allotted 11st 12lb for the race, 31lb more than the next entrant in the handicap list, Carlovent.