Silvestre de Sousa, a three-time champion jockey, has been given a 24-day whip ban under the totting-up procedure after he used his stick above the permitted level on Big Mojo in the Flying Childers at Doncaster’s Leger meeting.
It was the Brazilian jockey’s fifth breach of the whip rules in six months.
De Sousa returned to riding in Britain in the spring after a successful stint in Hong Kong had ended on a sour note when he fell foul of the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s stringent betting rules and received a 10-month suspension for ‘facilitating’ a bet placed on a race by a fellow Brazilian rider.
Despite having been British champion in 2015, 2017 and 2018, De Sousa could barely buy a Group One before he went to Hong Kong and linked up with trainer Roger Varian. The 43-year-old jockey has since won the 1,000 Guineas on Elmalka and the Queen Anne and Prix Jacques Le Marois on one of the season’s unexpected stars, Charyn. Arguably he has been a little unlucky not to win another two Group Ones on the grey colt.
And while he will be back in time to ride Charyn in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on October 19, he will miss this weekend’s Cambridgeshire meeting at Newmarket.
The ban runs from September 27 to October 5 and October 7 to October 13. As there is no racing in Britain on October 6, he could ride at Longchamp on the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe card should he have any rides. The final eight days of his ban are suspended for six months or 200 rides, whichever comes first.
The current whip rules including the ultimate sanction of losing a race, have generally been working pretty well although like Kielan Woods over jumps, De Sousa appears to be a bit of an outlier with his bans being because of an excessive number of hits, twice not giving a horse time to respond and once for hitting a horse in the wrong place.
