There is footage on Twitter of the horse from the jump at the last when he hurt himself to when Paul Townend jumped off. It’s a sickening sight to be honest, the poor thing can hardly stand.
I don’t buy that Paul couldn’t feel lameness or the change of action. I’m not a jockey but I’ve ridden horses most of my life and used to own them when I was younger.
I’m afraid he has just done an awful lot of damage to the already tarnished reputation that racing has. Any horse getting injured is bad, but seeing an incident where it looks like the jockey feels the win is more important than the horses welfare is disastrous. And that is exactly how it looked.
This is going to put racing on the front pages for all the worst reasons.