Britain’s champion jockey Oisin Murphy has been given a date to appear in court after being charged by police in connection with a late night car crash in April that left a female passenger hospitalised.
The four-time champion rider was charged by postal requisition, the charges being for driving a motor vehicle while over the legal alcohol limit and failing to cooperate with a roadside test. He is due to appear at Reading Magistrates Court on July 3.
The crash, referred to in a Thames Valley Police statement as “a serious road traffic collision”, happened just after midnight on Sunday, April 27 and involved a grey Mercedes A Class, which hit a tree. The crash occurred in Hermitage, West Berkshire, about 15 miles from Lambourn.
Murphy, one of Europe’s top riding talents, has continued to race as normal since the crash and had five winners at Royal Ascot last week. But the 29-year-old Irishman has made headlines for the wrong reasons a number of times in the last five years.
The most serious of those resulted in a British Horseracing Authority (BHA) independent disciplinary panel in February 2022 banning him for 14 months, backdated to December 2021 until February 2023, over five charges.
Those charges included two failed race day alcohol tests in May and October 2021; misleading BHA officials during the Covid restrictions of 2020, claiming he was on holiday in Italy when he was actually on the Greek island of Mykonos, which at that time was on the UK government’s red list; accessing a racecourse in breach of Covid protocols; and acting in a way that prejudiced the reputation of horse racing.
The BHA conditions laid out at the disciplinary hearing included “the need for Mr Murphy to remain sober and avoid the use of any illicit substances or social drugs.”
In August last year, Murphy missed his rides at Kempton Park on a day he was scheduled to have a mandatory breath test. He took to X to explain that he had not taken up his riding engagements because he was suffering with haemorrhoids.
Murphy has also fallen foul of the French authorities. In November 2020, France Galop handed him a three-month suspension after he tested positive for cocaine pre-racing at Chantilly that July. The jockey avoided a sterner sanction after he successfully contested that he had not taken cocaine, rather “environment contamination” had occurred as a result of having sex with a cocaine user. ∎
