Video: Horse comes out of nowhere and nearly causes disaster in Irish cycling race

Video: Horse comes out of nowhere and nearly causes disaster in Irish cycling race

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

This is the one time of year that people care about horse racing, but the horses need to learn to stay in their place. 

During a race in Donegal, Ireland, this weekend, an enormous white stallion came bounding over a fence, across a ditch and right into the path of 100 cyclists. 

After narrowly avoiding a potentially dangerous collision with the peloton, the horse gathered steam and ended up setting the pace. 

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“I was ahead of the pack, filming out the back of a car when the horse bolted,” Jonny Collins, who captured the video, told the Belfast Telegraph. “It was crazy. The horse was absolutely massive, the biggest I've ever seen in my life.”

Collins added that the horse had been running parallel to the riders for a while and Thomas McLaughlin recognized that it was nearly a disaster. 

“If the horse had bolted even five seconds earlier than it did, it could have been absolute carnage out there,” McLaughlin, who does PR for the cycling club that organized the race, told the Telegraph. “It literally jumped out 10 feet ahead of the lead riders. Looking at the video footage now, it seems quite funny, but actually it could have been much more serious.”

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