One for the scrapbook

Withdrawn horses are pretty common, I saw somewhere near 350 horses pulled from races last year. I've seen some crazy things, but Just when you think you have seen it all, something new gets thrown into the mix.

There are many reasons that a horse does not run, usually because it doesn't want to go into the stalls. This evening we saw something a bit different. A blindfolded horse, already in the stalls, broke loose at Kempton before the start of the race, not unheard of. The next thing that happened was unheard of. Still with its blindfold on, and obviously running blind, it crashed through the rails and into the lake. Quite a few of the stall handlers had to run around the lake for 15 minutes to shepherd the animal back to safety. With it being so dark on the TV it was difficult to see exactly what was going on, remarkable stuff. Fortunately it was ok and the blindfold didn't impede it's efforts to swim out of trouble but it looked a bit hairy for quite a time.