Jake Launchbury, a 16-year-old jockey riding for only the fourth time under rules, was banned for 21 days by the stewards at Ludlow on Wednesday after a dramatic conclusion to a race in which he threw away almost certain victory on Bally Sands, the 2-1 favourite.
Page Fuller, who finished fourth on Petit Ecuyer, received a 10-day ban for her part in the same incident after Launchbury started to steer Bally Sands around the final fence before diverting sharply to his right to jump it, losing his winning chance in the process.
Bally Sands was about three lengths clear of Petit Ecuyer between the final two fences in the Annual Members Handicap Chase for amateur and conditional jockeys when Launchbury mistook the correct route to the winning post. Petit Ecuyer was then hampered as Bally Sands veered towards the inside to jump the last, with the two horses eventually finishing fourth and third respectively behind the 12-1 chance Always Bold.
The fact that both horses jumped the last fence rather than bypass it, as seemed likely when Launchbury began his manoeuvre, could not hide the fact that both had failed to achieve the best possible placing as a result of the error. Following an inquiry, the stewards decided that “if [Launchbury] had ridden the most direct course he would have won the race”, while Fuller’s actions on Petit Ecuyer, an 8-1 chance, “could have materially affected her finishing position”, and issued bans under a rule that more generally applies to deliberate “non-triers”.
David Bridgwater, a former jockey and the trainer of Bally Sands, was stoical about the loss of a near-certain winner after Wednesday’s incident, but angered by the length of the penalty imposed on his jockey.
“Thankfully we’ve been having a few winners and we had a winner for the owner [Robin Mathew] the other day,” Bridgwater said, “so from a personal point of view, these things happen and you take it on the chin.
“The thing that I’m concerned about is Jake, he’s only 16 and just had a handful of rides and it’s a big thing for him. There’s a lot of emotion flying around, because it would have been his first winner and a perfect start, and he gave him such a great ride, he’s a funny old horse and he got a great tune out of him.
“It was just a mistake. They asked me to go into the stewards’ room with him, and it was the same idiots there that were there when I was riding 20 years ago.
“He’s a 16-year-old kid, for God’s sake. He didn’t take the wrong course [and] he jumped the last fence. Okay, give him a week’s ban or something, but to give him 21 days, I think they must still have been pissed from lunch. The other [jockey] was just the victim, she was just in the wrong place and she’s got 10 [days]. What’s the point in that?”
Later on the same card, Jonjo O’Neill finally broke a losing streak that stretched back to 19 November when Rose Revived, at 8-1, took the concluding bumper by a neck under Tony McCoy.
O’Neill’s lean spell had extended to 61 runners without success earlier in the afternoon when Kelvingrove was touched off by just a short-head in a handicap hurdle at Taunton, and his change of fortune owed much to McCoy, who steered Rose Revived towards the stands’ rail at the top of the home straight and raced apart from the rest of the field until the closing stages.
