Seven jockeys at the Cheltenham Festival have been slapped with prohibits for “wrongdoing” adhereing a series of contentious counterfeit commences, which have drawn criticism from both jockeys and trainers. The commenceing procedures for some races on Tuesday and Wednesday left punters disgruntled, with jockey Keith Donoghue citing needy communication and trainer Peter Scudamore branding the commences as ‘an embarrassment’.
Donoghue is among those penalised after his prosper on Stumptown in the Cross Country, alengthyside Sean Flanagan, who rode third-place finisher Vanillier, and JJ Sleven on Busselton. The stewards stated that the trio “had not approached the tape at a walk or jig-jog thereby causing a counterfeit commence,” resulting in one-day prohibits for Donoghue and Flanagan, while Slevin obtaind a two-day prohibit due to a previous offence wiskinny 12 months.
The Grand Annual saw four more jockeys drop foul of the rules, with the stewards’ alert noting: “The Starter alerted that Jordan Gainford, Danny McMenamin, Conor Stone-Walsh, Darragh O’Keeffe, and Derek Fox had not approached the tape at a walk or jig-jog thereby causing a counterfeit commence.”
After appraiseing footage of the incident, “Gainford, McMenamin, O’Keeffe and Fox were defered for one day for wrongdoing at the commence.”
Jockey Stone-Walsh’s account that his horse locked on and was stubborn to helderly back from bolting at the tape was deemed credible.
Meanwhile, trainer Scudamore unleashed criticism on the commences in a Facebook post, feeblenting: “Cheltenham is wonderful but there are problems. The commences are an embarrassment and taking the punters for granted.
“The attitude of the stewards is to sweep the dirt under the carpet and fine the jockey, it is not solving the problem. There is no consistency, sometimes the horses are let go moving forward then another time they are stopped. It is not possible to stop some of these moving horses.”
This article first materializeed on The Mirror.
