There was a heroic example of great Irish sportsmanship at Roscommon racecourse as a jockey forfeited his chance to win a race to save a competitor from falling off his horse.
The extraordinary scenes unfolded as jockey Jody McGarvey was briefly knocked out cold after being hit in the face by his horse in a freak accident.
It happened in 2015 at the sixth fence when McGarvey’s horse Old Supporter became startled after landing from the jump. The horse whipped its head back, catching McGarvey square in the face.
The Kildare based jockey was out cold and in danger of falling off his horse and being seriously injured, but was saved by the quick thinking of a rival jockey.
Danny Mullins was close enough to see what had happened and managed to reach over and grab McGarvey in time to stop him from falling.
Mullins dragged McGarvey back into an upright position on his horse and thankfully McGarvey regained consciousness quickly enough to take control as Old Supporter continued running.
Both jockeys ended up pulling up their horses and were later astonished at how quickly the news of the incident had spread around the world.
McGarvey revealed that friends in Australia had been in touch with him after seeing a video of the incident.
@AtTheRaces @dan2231 @RoscommonRaces pic.twitter.com/Vr4iRpxWff
— Jody McGarvey (@jody_mcgarvey) September 28, 2015
He said: “I’ve not seen anything like that before in any of the races I’ve been involved in. It was funny the way it happened to be fair, Danny had to think real quick.
“It could have all gone wrong as I wasn’t really aware what was happening. I was fighting a losing battle and then I felt Danny pushing me back on.
“The horse just launched himself at the fence, landed on it and fired me forwards, and when his head came back up it hit me in the face, knocking me out of the saddle.
“My saddle slipped and I had gone past the point of no return with a one-way ticket, I was preparing to hit the ground. I certainly owe Danny a drink or two!
“It’s amazing the publicity it has got. A few lads I know riding in Australia have even been in touch to say it has been on the news out there and the footage on Twitter has been viewed over 120,000 times, apparently.
“I’ve been getting a bit of stick from the lads, as you could imagine, but I’ll milk it while I can!”
The video has now been seen hundreds of thousands of times on various social media sites.
Take a look at the video below.
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