Talking Horses: Weighing room culture allowed Dunne bullying of Frost to go unchallenged

If jockeys accept the flaws in the long-standing practice of self-policing disputes behind closed doors the sport can move on

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.