Johnny Murtagh rules out appeal
Aidan O’Brien will have to starting looking for another jockey for some of his headline runners in the next fortnight after Johnny Murtagh decided not to appeal against the six-day suspension he picked up on Friday.
Murtagh received his suspension after riding Starspangledbanner to beat Equiano by a neck in the Group One July Cup. The racecourse stewards on duty at Newmarket decided that the jockey had been guilty of careless riding when he manoeuvred Starspangledbanner, who broke from stall 11, across the track to race on the far rail.
In the process Starspangledbanner cut across several of the runners behind him, causing interference. Murtagh had been considering the practicalities of launching an appeal against the decision to the BHA. The suspension rules him out of the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on July 24th, when O’Brien is planning to run his Irish Derby winner Cape Blanco, and the first two days of Glorious Goodwood meeting, which will include the Sussex Stakes.
Murtagh has declined to make any comment other than to accept his suspension but he will be chasing another Group One victory at Longchamp on Wednesday when Jan Vermeer contests the Grand Prix De Paris, a race which O’Brien won with Scorpion in 2005.
Jan Vermeer was considered to be the best of O’Brien’s Derby runners, having won the Gallinule Stakes at the Curragh in May, but he was then fourth at Epsom two weeks later and then third to stable companion Cape Blanco in the Irish Derby.
He faces a field of eight which includes two from André Fabre, who has won the race 10 times. The last of those was 12 months ago with Cavalryman for Godolphin and this year Fabre saddles the Godolphin –owned Lawspeaker, winner of a Listed race at Bordeaux in May, and Goldwaki, who won the Group Three Prix Du Lys at Chantilly last month and who has been supplemented for this race.
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