Escaped racehorse walks into a French bar

Patrons of a sports bar north of Paris last week were startled to find a runaway racehorse coming in to join them.

The peace of the normally quiet PMU bar (Pari Mutuel Urbain, France’s state-controlled bookie) in Chantilly was abruptly shattered on Monday 24 September when a racehorse came careening through the door, bringing the action customers normally bet on uncomfortably close to home.According to local paper Ouest France, the horse had thrown its rider at the Chantilly racecourse half a mile away and bolted.

The filly’s owner, Jean-Marie Béguigné, said the horse had a “penchant for escape” but it was “exceptional” she had got as far as she had this time.

The entire episode was caught on the bar’s security camera (see above) with the horse, ironically enough, running straight through to the betting corner of the bar before turning round and making her way out again.

Although she can be seen bucking as she tries to rid herself of her saddle, when she was recaptured in a nearby parking lot a short while later she showed no signs of distress or injury and indeed has been out on the course since the incident.

There were no injuries to any of the seven people in the bar at the time, a few chairs and tables were damaged, but owner Stéphanie Jasmin remarked if the horse had arrived five minutes earlier it might have been more serious as there were 20 people at the counter but they’d all left to catch the 9.55 train.