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He wasn’t a favorite to win at the Otaki races in New Zealand Saturday, nor was he even supposed to have been entered.
Racegoers could not believe their eyes when a blonde-wigged, undie-less man in a black skirt jumped the fence and joined the last 50 metres of the DominionPost Handicap. He fell over the line and was then apprehended by security staff as the jockeys stood by watching in bewilderment.
Racecourse inspector Bob Bevege claims the Wellington man was egged on during a stag party to run alongside the fence but instead decided to leap over it.
"He was inebriated to say the least, but he was a lucky boy. The horses were running wide because of a heavy track, and if one had shied it could have been nasty."
The man was running closest to the biggest horse in the race, Temple View.
"I kept an eye on him in the run home but I didn't have to change ground,” Jockey Thomas Russell said. “If he'd changed direction it might have been different. I yelled that he was a bloody idiot as I went past, but by then he was lying on his face on the ground."
In an ironic twist, the wigged man’s friend accepted partial blame and it just so happens the horse that beat the drunkard by a nose was named Share The Blame.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
