Whipping Boys Get Banned

 
Ask any jockey what it is they love about horse racing, and the guaranteed reply will be: “it’s the thrill of thrashing an animal’s bare buttocks with a thin piece of leather.”
If you can’t do that, what’s the point? It’s a question jockey Davy Russell had to deal with while he was on board the favourite, Leave At Dawn, in the 1.15pm at Clonmel in Ireland. He was stuck in the back of the pack and had dropped his whip early on.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and so the 35-year-old took drastic action and grabbed a whip from fellow rider Phillip Enright.
Sadly, eagle-eyed stewards spotted Russell’s skulduggery and issued both him and Enright – adjudged to have been complicit – with a five-day racing ban.
“I never set out to do this as it wasn’t premeditated,” Russell lied. “The suspension has come as a bit of a shock. I’ve nothing more to say and will have to digest it.”