Latvian Television reports that Sunday morning a male horse named Vesa attacked Dace Brasliņa-Rozīte and her 11-year-old son as they were cycling on the trail between the Vaivari and Kauguri parts of Jūrmala.
After biting the son, the horse started following the mother and trampled the bicycle which she used to defend herself, possibly in protest at alternative forms of locomotion.
Thankfully a passer-by stopped and let her inside her car.
The two received minor injuries, and the son had to take rabies shots as a precaution as such antisocial behavior is unusual for healthy horses.
The police have started administrative proceedings against the owner of the horse, who is residing at a retirement home in Kauguri. Meanwhile the Food and Veterinary Service has tested the horse against disease, finding it to be not rabid but decidedly bad-tempered.
Vesa seems to have calmed down and was afterwards seen grazing at the nearby Sloka bus station, its appetite for aggression seemingly sated.
In unrelated but equally bizarre cycling news, in central Rīga late on Sunday an inebriated cyclist opened fire with a flare gun on a car that he thought was following him. Municipal police arrested him and discovered that despite wearing a yellow shirt he was not a rogue member of the Tour de France peloton but simply a drunk man on a bike.
