Silvestre de Sousa

[guskennedy]

Overall, I’m a supporter of the current rules relating to interference during races. The days when winners on merit regularly got thrown out in the stewards’ room are long gone and rightly so.

My eyebrows were raised, however, by the lenient view apparently taken by the Goodwood stewards of Silvestre de Sousa’s winning ride on Parisian Pyramid in the nursery yesterday. The horse absolutely trotted up and would have won however he was ridden but it seemed to me that in order to guarantee victory de Sousa either deliberately or recklessly "took out" his nearest challengers in the closing stages of the race and as far as I can see no stewards’ enquiry was held and the jockey has escaped with a one day "careless riding" ban. I think he was very lucky.

The first incident was 2f out. Parisian Pyramid was racing about three horse widths off the stands’ side rail and held a slight lead over Tagula Breeze on his inside. De Sousa looked across to his left and then either deliberately manoeuvred his horse towards the rail or allowed it to go in that direction without making the slightest attempt to stop it doing so, thereby effectively ending Tagula Breeze’s chances. He did exactly the same thing coming down to the final furlong, this time getting right over to the rail and badly hampering Golden Rosie who had moved into second place after Tagula Breeze’s misfortunes. Again, he had looked across and was clearly aware that Golden Rosie was there.

In my view, there should have been an enquiry at least. Parisian Pyramid would keep the race but I’d have come down hard on de Sousa with a lengthy ban. A ban for just one day amounts to a very minor slap on the wrist. I just think it was rather more than "careless" riding.

Any views?

[seabird]

I didn’t see the head-on but even from the side he looked to have at least taken the ground of a number of his opponents.

However, he was a very comfortable winner and that probably explained the lack of an enquiry.

Colin

[Author]

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