Jockey pays the price for premature celebrationBy Greg Wood at Leopardstown
December 29, 2005
ROGER Loughran stood tall and proud in the saddle of Central House at the end of the Paddy Power Dial-A-Bet Chase on Tuesday, and waved his whip at the packed grandstand. He was celebrating his first winner as a professional jockey, and in a grade 1 event, too. Just for good measure, he swung a looping underarm punch into the air.
There was just one problem with this picture of sporting delight: they still had 80 metres to run. Loughran had mistaken the end of a running rail for the winning post, and as he eased up on Central House, Hi Cloy and Fota Island galloped past and relegated him to third place.
It was an extraordinary, humiliating error, which briefly reduced the crowd to near-silence. Some catcalls followed soon afterwards, but as Loughran returned to the paddock to unsaddle, there was more sympathy than anger.
Dessie Hughes, the trainer of Central House and a champion hurdle-winning jockey in the 1970s, had just seen a grade 1 victory snatched away by pilot error. Yet he refused to criticise Loughran, and confirmed that the 26-year-old will continue to partner Central House. "Roger gets a real tune out of him," Hughes said, "and I can only feel sorry for him, as he's the one who's really suffering now. The owners still have their horse, and there are plenty more races for him, and Roger will keep the ride. There is a running rail from the last fence which stops on the run-in, and he thought that when it stopped it was the winning post.
"It was a mistake, but there's not many jockeys who haven't done the same some time. When I rode Monksfield to dead-heat with Night Nurse at Liverpool [in the 1977 Templegate Hurdle] I looked up two strides before the line to see if I was at the post. If I hadn't done that, maybe it wouldn't have been a dead-heat."
Loughran, who refused to offer any comment on the incident, was called before the stewards and banned from riding for 14 days, which effectively rules him out for most of January.
However, he will be free to ride Central House in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham in March, a race in which, on Tuesday's form, he has a serious chance.
Michael Hourigan, the trainer of Hi Cloy, was the prime beneficiary of Loughran's moment of madness. "You can't be sure that my horse would not have won anyway, as he was the only one staying on after the last [jump]," Hourigan said. "You have to feel sorry for Roger, it was a human error, but these things happen."
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