{"id":173852,"date":"2025-12-08T15:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T15:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/173852\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T15:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T15:49:13","slug":"may-to-take-break-from-raceday-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/173852\/","title":{"rendered":"May to take break from raceday driving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

By Dave Di Somma, Harness News Desk\u00a0<\/p>\n

Champion driver Ricky May is expected to be on the sidelines for the “next two months at least” after suffering a medical event two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

The 67-year-old collapsed while working on the family farm at Methven, prompting his pacemaker to be activated. May had the device implanted after he fell out of the sulky during a race at Omakau in Central Otago in January 2020.<\/p>\n

“It was my own fault,” says May of his latest health issue.<\/p>\n

“It was a hot day, I was spraying all day on the motorbike and I got dehydrated.”<\/p>\n

He immediately stood himself down from driving.<\/p>\n

Last week he tried to get a medical clearance to resume race day driving but it was declined.<\/p>\n

“They told me to take it easy and that I potentially had a susceptibility to it happening again.”<\/p>\n

“And there’s no way we want to put anyone in jeopardy.”<\/p>\n

“I feel as good as gold \u00a0but will be two months off the scene at least,” says May.<\/p>\n

“It is frustrating because there are a lot of good races at this time of the year and a lot of good horses coming back.”<\/p>\n

Depending on how he feels May will look at re-applying for a medical clearance around February-March next year.<\/p>\n

One of the greats of New Zealand harness racing the seven-time New Zealand Cup winner has 3192 career wins to be third all-time behind Tony Herlihy and Maurice McKendry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dave Di Somma, Harness News Desk\u00a0 Champion driver Ricky May is expected to be on the sidelines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-173852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}