Frost left in the cold again after dispiriting and tone-deaf appeal

IT WAS not the only time that Bryony Frost had been floored this week. On her first trip to Ayr, the jockey was unseated from Flic Ou Voyou at the seventh fence on Friday.

Licking her wounds in frustration, Frost limped off the track and was stood down for the day. Battered and bruised, Frost looks like she is low in confidence and not getting as many opportunities as before, but the biggest blow of the week came in the farcical appeal hearing that reduced Robbie Dunne’s 18-month ban for the bullying and harassing Frost to 10.

In Wednesday’s BHA central London hearing, nine men dished out prehistoric views for four hours that inevitably delivered a bewildering conclusion. In a week that started when clocks sprung forward an hour, racing decided to fall back 20 years. The original hearing lasted six days. It was obvious this wouldn’t be as long, with Anthony Boswood QC, 74, saying Dunne’s penalty was ‘too severe’ and the charge sheet too long. He moaned about BHA’s RuleJ19, the one on ‘conduct prejudicial to the integrity or good reputation of racing’. Dunne breached this four times but Boswood insisted that was akin to being found guilty of ‘both murder and manslaughter’. So committing the same crime four times, you should just be punished for one as it is under the same jurisdiction? Erm, that’s not how it usually works.

That rather set the disturbing tone. Nine men bantering away about their amateur riding career and how they wouldn’t let each other down the inside trivialised Dunne’s threat of putting Frost (pictured) through a wing of a fence. Just a ‘spat’ or a ‘quarrel’ according to some members of the panel. Calling a woman a ‘dangerous c***’ and ‘a f ****** w***e’ is a bit more serious than that.

The dispiriting sight continued when Dunne’s lawyer Robin Mathew QC, claimed he had not ‘caused distress or fear’ and said Frost was ‘a woman quick to emotion’.

Being subject to a sustained campaign of bullying and harassment is sure to frustrate anyone in any workplace. Perhaps, there would have been a dignified tone if a woman was on the panel. You know, someone who would actually understand and empathise with the victim rather than play down any incident at any opportunity.

The fear was that this long process would isolate Frost further. It seems to be the case as a graphic doing the rounds on Twitter showed her number of rides between January and March this year was 76. That’s 41 fewer than the same period in 2021.

As ever, Frost smiled through the pain yesterday at Ayr when third on Il Ridoto. Battered and bruised on-and-off the track, it begs the question how much more of this she can tolerate.

Let’s hope attitudes can shift but after Wednesday’s hearing, you wouldn’t bet on it.