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 āthere is no way I would whip a horse to deathā. 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 ābetween 15 and 20 minutesā. He has said that he āhit him once or twice to get him moving forwardā when he acted up.
