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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Vincent Whelan

Irish jockey Neil Callan given 12-day ban for riding a finish a circuit too soon

Irish jockey Neil Callan has had to take his medicine after being banned for 12 days for making a foolish error at Kempton.

He mistakenly thought he was approaching the winning post onboard 50-1 shot Ballet Blanc, not realising he had one more circuit to go.

After easing his horse down, believing he had won comfortably on the longshot, he then realised his error when he looked around and saw his nine weighing room colleagues taking their horses out for another lap of the Surrey track.

READ MORE: Grand National hero Noble Yeats' new jockey confirmed after Sam Waley-Cohen's retirement

Using a facepalm emoji, Callan tweeted in response to footage of the replay: "Yep that was embarrassing!!"

The stewards handed him a lengthy suspension for the blip in the race won by the 9-4 favourite Blazeon Five.

Callan had earlier enjoyed two winners, Tenjin for Marco Botti and Lelabad from William Knight's stable.

Their report read: "Neil Callan, the rider of Ballet Blanc, unplaced, had appeared to ride a finish a circuit too soon. After being interviewed and shown recordings of the incident, the rider was suspended for 12 days."

In five runs, Ballet Blanc has placed once and was set to race over the longest trip of her career on the night.

She eventually completed and was tailed off, 86 lengths behind the ninth-placed horse.

Dozens of punters shared the footage and reacted to the events that unfolded at the end of the eight-race card.

One wrote: "Neil Callan suspended for 12 days for thinking the race was 5f not 2 miles..."

Another pointed out the bemused nature of Mark Johnson's reaction to the error.

With several laugher emojis, they wrote: "commentary makes this I must say haha."

And a third person added: "Callan has had a shocker here."

Callan returned to ride in the UK in 2021 after spending 11 years in Hong Kong, where he rode 282 winners. He earned more than £30million in prize money and the nickname 'Iron Man' from fans of the sport.

Prior to the successful venture abroad, he spent more than two decades competing in Britain and his Group 1 winners included Borderlescott in the 2009 Nunthorpe Stakes.

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