Flatter: It is time for racing to quit taking jockeys for granted

Jockeys are treated badly. Period.

The career they chose puts their lives at risk every time they go to work. If they try to win at all costs, they are branded as reckless. When they do not win, they are criticized by horseplayers who make like slipshod craftsmen blaming their tools.

As if that were not bad enough, jockeys were let down at racing’s two biggest summertime venues and at a third place that has all the luster of an assembly line.

Abel Cedillo was left on the track after a spill Sunday at Del Mar. Because the race still had a lap to go, the ambulance team did not touch him. Thankfully, the track crew did. It went out of its way to rescue Cedillo, who it turned out had a broken neck. Sure, why rescue a fallen rider with a medical kit when a rake will do?

At Saratoga, jockey John Velázquez was dismounted at the start of turf race Wednesday. He wound up with a cranky wrist and was too sore to ride Thursday and Friday. Oh, yes. The man who has made more in purse earnings than anyone other jockey in racing history had to limp on his own from trackside through the old clubhouse and into the first-aid station.

Around the same time at Finger Lakes, jockeys boycotted the last five races, because Óscar Gómez waited for a qualified medical technician to get to him after his horse reared and pinned him in the starting gate. Jackie Davis, another jockey, had to run over to Gómez with first-aid supplies, because the ambulance team employed by the track was not given the go-ahead to take care of him. Gómez eventually was treated for a thrice-broken leg.

One day earlier at the same track, Andre Worrie had to find refuge under the inner rail after the horse he was riding in the homestretch collapsed and left him with a broken arm. Emergency medical technicians who were supposed to attend to him found themselves on the wrong side of the track.

Too often regarded as fungible assets, jockeys forever have been the most overlooked part of our game. That used to be only a figurative statement. This past week it became literally so.

“Well, nobody cares,” Jockeys’ Guild boss Terry Meyocks said on my podcast this week. “They think that they can move on to another jock. It’s on the bottom of the radar screen, and it needs to change.”

Who did Meyocks mean by “they”? Take your pick. Owners, trainers, track executives, first responders, horseplayers, bystanders. You name it. They are the “they.”

I know a lot of jockeys, and to a man and woman they are in the business for the love of what they do. In most cases it really is not about the money. For every John Velázquez, who has made millions, there are hundreds of riders who live hand-to-mouth lives.

According to Equibase, 1,155 different jockeys have had at least one start this year in the U.S. and Canada. Only 278, though, have averaged at least one race per calendar day.

The rule of thumb is they get 10 percent of the purse for winning a race and considerably less when they don’t. Even if that 10 percent were applied across the board, more than 55 percent of the jockeys would be on pace to make less than the $30,000 the government sets as the poverty line for a family of four. The truth is the percentage is a lot higher than that.

So most of them make next to nothing. They work mornings often for little more than the mere chance of getting a whiff of a ride in the afternoon. They get verbal abuse from their fellow humans and subject themselves to potentially lethal abuse from the beasts they ride.

Thank you, sir. May I have another?

Now they cannot even get reliable, on-the-job, medical attention when they are in strife.

Meyocks said if there was a common denominator from the past week, it was the need to make sure first responders who are charged with looking after fallen jockeys know that they really should respond first, especially when new personnel replace familiar faces.

“Communication and education,” Meyocks said. “Ideally you’d have the same paramedics and EMTs and doctors there. There’s one doctor here at Saratoga who retired after 36 years who I’ve known since I was working here. I have the utmost respect for him.”

Meyocks said in Velázquez’s case at Saratoga, a new ambulance driver did not know the way to the first-aid station. At Del Mar, he said the stewards did not make the immediate decision to stop the race when Cedillo fell, and that left everyone frozen about what to do next.

“It’s important to have confidence in the team,” Meyocks said. “When the riders go out, they know they’re going to be taken care of. But when they lose confidence, that’s what’s transpired the last couple days at Finger Lakes.”

At all three tracks there were meetings to deal with these problems just like there are meetings to deal with problems at any workplace. In most workplaces, though, lives are not put in danger if someone makes like a cubicle clone in “Office Space” who forgets to put the cover on a TPS report.

Far be it from jockeys to sound off about this. Individually, they do not want to bite the hands that feed them and their families. He or she who complains today can count on sitting out tomorrow.

Since racetracks are virtual right-to-work states, Meyocks and the guild can do only so much. The same goes for jockeys’ agents, most of whom scramble to find rides for their clients lest they themselves be spun through the ever-present revolving door.

In the public forum, it often seems like animals have more activists sounding off on their behalf than humans do.

Yet even with risk of life and limb and surrounded by kneejerk critics and immersed in monthly bills, jockeys keep on keeping on.

As Meyocks said, “They care about the game, they care about the horses, and they care about their fellow jocks that they’re competing against.”

Maybe it is time to pay that back. Which reminds me. Other than the clickers who are keeping track of excessive crop use, is anyone at the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority paying attention to this?