Frost loses out to Dunne as ‘bullying’ row jockeys clash in head-to-head
Time pair have met since leaking of explosive allegations fight out close finish but stay well apart off the track
Robbie Dunne won a titanic battle against Bryony Frost at Ludlow yesterday as the pair met for the first time since becoming the centre of explosive allegations of weighingroom bullying and harassment.
Frost, Britain’s highest-profile female jumps jockey, this year formally accused Dunne of verbally abusing her after races and standing naked in front of her in the men’s changing room.
With a British Horseracing Authority investigation ongoing and a verdict imminent, a long-term injury to Dunne meant the pair had not crossed paths since details of Frost’s allegations were leaked last month. But they could not avoid each other on Dunne’s return at the Shropshire course yesterday.
Having seized control of the day’s first race aboard odds-on favourite Rainyday Woman, Frost felt the figure of Dunne, and his mount Cup Of Coffee, draw alongside as the sixstrong field entered the home straight. The duo quickly pulled clear, as fate dictated the adversaries off the course would battle it out in a head-to-head for superiority on it.
Jumping the final hurdle in unison, it was Dunne who cajoled his mare into a 1¼-length victory that will doubtless have meant far more
to the triumphant jockey than the £4,901 on offer for the winning connections. As chance would have it, the jockeys had earlier emerged one after the other from the weighing room before the race, when it was apparent which one was considered the star act.
While Frost, who became the first female jockey to win a Grade One jump race at the Cheltenham Festival in 2019, stopped to sign autographs and pose for photos, journeyman Dunne could offer nothing but a wry smile as he changed path to skirt around her.
Unsurprisingly, the pair stayed apart after crossing the finish line, and neither jockey stopped to make a comment on their way back to the weighing room.
It was, admitted clerk of the course Simon Sherwood, one of the more curious affairs to have played out at this small, picturesque course that rarely finds itself in the limelight. “I have to admit, I was totally unaware of it until yesterday,” Sherwood said. “Someone asked me if I knew what was happening in the first race and I thought, ‘Well yes, it starts at 12.30pm and it’s a six-runner mares’ hurdle’. At the end of the day, all publicity is good publicity. We’re a unique, quirky little racecourse, so it’s nice for people to be talking about Ludlow in any capacity.”
The episode itself has caused divisions throughout the racing world after the shocking nature of Frost’s allegations emerged.
According to leaked documents, she reportedly alleged that, after a race in Stratford in July 2020, Dunne “said something on the lines of, ‘You’re a f---ing whore, you’re a dangerous c---’, and ‘If you ever f--ing murder [cut across] me like that again, I’ll murder you’.”
In his statement to the BHA’S investigator Chris Watts, Dunne denied using the words “whore” or “c---” when he complained to Frost about her racing style.
Sherwood said: “It’s sad where we are. I was a jockey for 10 years and the weighing room was the holy grail. It’s the one place that, when you finish riding, you miss most – the banter, the camaraderie.
“It’s unique. It’s a shame that suddenly it’s being referred to as a misogynist haven because that’s so far from the truth. I think it’s sad that it hasn’t been dealt with in-house.”