Thornton confident autopsy will exonerate him

Kevin Thornton is confident an autopsy on the horse Flogas Sunset Cruise will exonerate him of any wrongdoing.

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.