Alphonse Le Grande, who squeezed home by a nose from Manxman in the £175,000 Cesarewitch Handicap at Newmarket on Saturday under the apprentice jockey Jamie Powell, has become the most high-profile winner to be disqualified for a whip offence by its rider since the penalty was introduced at the start of 2023.

The initial impression among most observers after Saturday’s race was that Powell used his whip 10 times in the final quarter-mile aboard Cathy O’Leary’s gelding, four more than the limit of six strokes in Flat races and the trigger-point for automatic disqualification if subsequently confirmed by the British Horseracing Authority’s whip review committee.

The committee concurred with that view at its weekly meeting on Tuesday and disqualified Alphonse Le Grande, who is trained in Ireland by O’Leary. Manxman, trained by Simon and Ed Crisford, was promoted to first place, with a prize of £90,000, while Aqwaam, Run For Oscar and Magellan Strait are promoted to second (£42,000), third (£21,000) and fourth (£10,500) respectively.

Powell, a 3lb-claiming apprentice, was also banned from riding for 28 days. Alphonse Le Grande is the third horse to be disqualified from first place since the 10-stroke trigger-point was introduced nearly two years ago.

Mixedwave was disqualified from a handicap chase at Market Rasen in November 2023 after Alex Edwards was found to have used his whip 16 times during the race, nine more than the limit of seven in jumps races, while Swift Tuttle, the mount of amateur Poppy Wynne, lost a short-head victory in a stayers’ handicap on the Flat at Doncaster in July this year.

“There is simply no excuse for using the whip four times or more above the permitted level,” Brant Dunshea, the BHA’s chief regulatory officer, said after the WRC’s finding was announced.

“It is encouraging that there have been so few instances of this being the case since the rule was introduced, with this being only the third time a winner has been disqualified for egregious overuse of the whip.”