Racing: Webster avoids shaking off injury

STUART WEBSTER, who last week was dragged from his horse by fellow jockey Kieran Fallon and later inolved in a fracas with the same jockey which left him with a broken nose, decided that it would be unwise to come toe to toe with the same rider yesterday, even to shake hands.

The person who tried to bring them together was Charlie Moore, the clerk of the course at Nottingham, where the jockeys were appearing together for the first time since the incident.

Moore said: 'Members of the press suggested that I ask the pair if they wished to come out together from the weighing room and shake hands to take the sting out of the issue.

'Kieran Fallon said that he would have been happy to shake hands but Stuart Webster said he would rather not. He's in a different position to Fallon and, understandably, told me that he did not wish to cloud the issue. He wants the matter to go to Portman Square as it stands.'

The two riders have been summoned to appear before the disciplinary committee of the Jockey Club next Tuesday, when Fallon faces two charges and Webster one.

A punter who missed out on an pounds 8,000 pay-out because a race started too early is to sue the Jockey Club over his loss. Jonathan Sobarasua, 69, of Nottingham, placed a four- horse accumulator costing pounds 4.50 in July 1991. All his selections won, but a race at Beverley, in which he had picked the winner, was declared void because it had started a minute early. He was paid pounds 1,151.73 on his first three winners but, had the race not been voided, he would have won pounds 8,236.47.

Yesterday's results, page 39