The Appeal

At the end of last year Robbie Dunne was banned for 18 months, with three months suspended, after being found guilty of conduct which the BHA considers to be ‘prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct and good reputation of horse racing in Great Britain by bullying and harassing a fellow licensed jockey’ between February 13th 2020 and September 3rd 2020.

Dunne allegedly threatened to harm Frost following a race during which he felt she had ridden dangerously. Amongst other (highly unpleasant) things, Frost claims he said ... ‘I will put you through a wing’.

In her testimony she said… ‘It's the way he promised and the way he said it that made me believe he wanted to.’

The penalty was decided in December 2021 by an independent disciplinary panel chaired by Brian Barker QC.

Dunne has since appealed the ban and had it reduced to ten months.

The appeal panel stated that Dunne was found guilty of one charge of breaching rule (J) 19, rather than four, as had been ruled in the initial case.

Robin Mathew QC, Dunne's barrister, argued that the disciplinary panel had not given enough attention to the testimonies of the jockeys and valets who had been present.

He said… ‘It is quite wrong to exclude the context of the weighing room culture.’

Louis Weston, representative for the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), underlined that Dunne’s use of ‘misogynistic language’ was damaging to the reputation of the sport.

Weston also raised that Dunne had moved to placing blame on the victim after his legal team referred to Frost’s emotional state during the first hearing.

He said… ‘It's wrong for the appellant to say [Frost] is in some way to blame for this. To say to her that she was a woman who's moved to emotion quite quickly – there is no basis for this. It's not for the bully to determine to the bullied how to react.’

The appeal panel chair Anthony Boswood QC said: ‘We wish to make it clear that Mr Dunne's behaviour, we think, was reprehensible and disgraceful and any jockey behaving like that in future must expect serious punishment.

We think [the original punishment] was severe given the number of rides Mr Dunne will have lost to date and will lose in the future at this late stage in his career.

We also think that it may be that the disciplinary panel gave insufficient credit for items of mitigation, such as his attempted apology to Bryony Frost after the Stratford race and his willingness to participate in a 'banging of heads together' at Kempton that was facilitated by the jockey Richard Johnson after conversations with Bryony Frost's father.’

Dunne's suspension began on 10 December 2021 which means it will now end on 9 October 2022 rather than March 2023.