Word of the week: ‘rapping’

THE public became familiar with “metatarsal” bones after English soccer star David Beckham fractured one of his in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup.

Now, the Cian O'Connor controversy has brought into the mainstream another rarely-heard term: rapping.

Rapping refers to cruel techniques used to force horses to jump higher. The most common form is striking the horse's legs with a stick or bar as he goes over a jump while another is putting barbed wire on the pole of a jump. It is regarded within the sport as a cruel shortcut taken by inefficient trainers. Sometimes these trainers give sedatives to calm horses which have been treated in this way.

It was because Mr O'Connor attributed the positive tests from two of his horses to sedatives that the issue of rapping arose yesterday. However, the showjumper and his vet James Sheeran firmly denied that either of his horses had been rapped.