Thornton confident autopsy will exonerate him
The Dundalk rider was at the centre of a social media wildfire that ignited last Monday when the stallion collapsed and died at the two-star GPA Festival show in Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of France. In a short time, Thornton was being accused of brutally galloping the horse to death.
He subsequently rejected accusations he had ridden the horse for three hours, claiming “there is no way I would whip a horse to death”. He explained that people at the show were confused by the fact he had three grey horses [including Saper and Startschuss] and had ridden Flogas for “between 15 and 20 minutes”. He has said that he “hit him once or twice to get him moving forward” when he acted up.
