An Irish jockey endured a nightmare day at the races when he broke his nose in a fall only to be run over by the ambulance brought to rescue him.
Chris Meehan was riding in a hurdle race in Merano, Italy, when he was unseated. The fall damaged his nose, gave him a black eye and left him with a nasty gash on his face.
But further damage was created by those on course to take him to a hospital.
“The racecourse ambulance come up alongside us and reversed up onto my leg,” Meehan told the Racing Post newspaper in an interview.
“They stopped it on top of my leg so I started screaming. It broke it straight away, everyone around me had to push it off me.”
And in a twist of irony, it transpires that Meehan hails from a family of ambulance workers.
“You couldn’t make it up,” added Meehan, who has been able to see the funny side of things.
“What makes it worse is my father, brother, aunty, they’re all ambulance people. My father actually teaches people in Northern Ireland and England how to drive an ambulance. It’s bizarre.”