On a mostly premier weekend for South African racing, an altercation between two jockeys in a Maiden contest at Turffontein made the news ahead of the World Sports Betting Gr1 Cape Town Met in Britain’s leading racing media.
The Racing Post reports that Sunday’s incident at Turffontein may have shocked but it is far from the only time things have become heated on and off the track.
In March 1994 Richard Dunwoody’s championship battle with Adrian Maguire reached boiling point when Dunwoody was banned for two weeks for deliberate obstruction.
At a meeting at Nottingham, Maguire’s odds-on shot attempted to pass up the inside only to find his gap shut off by Dunwoody, leading to Maguire crashing into the plastic rail and almost becoming unseated.
Dunwoody went on to win but was disqualified by the stewards, who handed him the maximum ban for the incident and forced him to miss the Cheltenham Festival. It was not enough, however, to stop his championship bid, which he snatched by three wins.
A year later, Dunwoody pulled the same move on Luke Harvey at Uttoxeter, where the stewards were less lenient and served him a 30-day suspension. He was unafraid of fights out the saddle either, having brawled with Mick Fitzgerald in the weighing room at Ascot.
Dunwoody is not the only jockey to have vented his frustrations post-race. Timmy Murphy and Dominic Elsworth also came to blows in the weighing room in 2013.
The incident was initially shrouded in mystery after Murphy emerged from the weighing room with a dislocated shoulder, but it soon emerged he had scrapped with Elsworth and was handed a nine-day ban, which ruled him out of the major Christmas meetings. Murphy was found to have instigated the fight, while Elsworth went unpenalised.
A black eye was the result of a weighing room fight between Sophie Doyle and Kirsty Milczarek in 2010, Jim Crowley required stitches after a clash with Raul de Silva at Goodwood in 2018, while Kieren Fallon and Stuart Webster also locked horns in the weighing room at Beverley after an incident on track in 1994.
Daryl Jacob got in hot water in 2017 for another post-race argument, in which he was cautioned for grabbing the silks of Noel George following a handicap hurdle at Cheltenham.
Last year Patrick Mullins issued a harsh reprimand to cousin Danny Mullins after the pair fought out the finish of the Grade 1 Faugheen Novice Chase. The champion amateur showed remorse and avoided sanctions but sometimes apologies are not enough, as shown by Christophe Soumillon two years earlier.
The French jockey elbowed Rossa Ryan out the saddle at Saint-Cloud in 2022, and although Ryan escaped unscathed, Soumillon was given a 60-day ban and was relieved of his duties as first rider for the Aga Khan.
Lester Piggott got up to his own antics in France when he elected to ‘borrow’ his rival’s whip during a race in Deauville in 1979.
Alain Lequeux was in second when Piggott passed and relieved the jockey of his whip, arguing to stewards later that Lequeux didn’t need to use it anymore. He was demoted to third as a result.
www.racingpost.com
