Three Melbourne Cup jockeys suspended

Tuesday 6 November 2012, 7:26pm

Luke Nolen earned himself a return visit to the stewards room on Thursday after a fiery exchange resulting from a suspension issued to Victoria's premier jockey for his Melbourne Cup ride on Lights Of Heaven.

Nolen was one of three Cup jockeys suspended with James McDonald, who rode runner-up Fiorente and Rhys McLeod on last-placed Ethiopia also outed.

Lights Of Heaven dropped out to finish 16th.

Nolen, suspended for 12 meetings, reserved his plea against a charge of causing interference to Kelinni and Mourayan as the field left the straight the first time.

The jockey asked stewards to adjourn the inquiry, saying he was fatigued.

"It's not a complicated matter and you're a senior rider," chief steward Terry Bailey told Nolen to which the jockey replied: "Thanks Terry, you've been great today mate."

Stewards said they would discuss Nolen's conduct at Thursday's Oaks meeting with his ban due to start the day after.

McDonald was outed for shifting ground sharply at the 800-metre mark and said he would appeal his 14-meeting ban which also starts on Friday.

McLeod's 12-meeting suspension also starts on Friday.

Despite the three suspensions, Bailey said he had seen rougher Cups and overall it was pretty clean.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »