The turf | 14 September 2017

Racing moves off the back pages only when its opponents have bad news to gloat over. Two examples lately have been the disciplining of Irish jump jockey Davy Russell for striking a wayward horse, and the death of the Flat-racer Permian, trained in Yorkshire by Mark Johnston, after he broke a leg as he crossed the finishing line at Arlington Park in Illinois.

The Russell saga reminded me of the morality tale of the frozen bird in a Russian forest that falls from the sky exhausted. A kindly hunter places the tiny creature inside his fur jacket, where it thaws. Anxious to carry on his shooting, the hunter spots a heap of still-steaming elk dung and places the creature in it to continue its recovery. Restored to health, the rescued bird sits up and sings joyously. Unfortunately, his song alerts a passing wolf, who snaps him up for lunch thus confirming that ‘He who places you in the shit is not necessarily your enemy. He who gets you out of the shit is not necessarily your friend. But if you are in the shit, at all costs don’t sing about it.’

Before a race at Tramore, Davy Russell’s mount Kings Dolly approached the ‘show’ hurdle at speed and halted abruptly, lifting him out of the saddle. The jockey, who insisted he did so without malice, and only to get the horse back under control, then punched Kings Dolly on the neck. Soon a video clip and comments began circulating on social media. Russell complained of media harassment, and with his defenders insisting that the blow wouldn’t have damaged Kings Dolly the jockey escaped initially with an official caution. In reaction to the media furore over such leniency, the Irish Turf authorities recalled the case to an appeals body under a former supreme court judge.