Monmouth Park conflict with jockeys goes down to the wire

A resolution in the conflict between jockeys and officials at Monmouth Park appears to be coming down to the wire.

Several jockeys – including one of the track's leading riders, Joe Bravo – have said that they would not ride at Monmouth Park because of New Jersey's new rule that bans the use of the riding crop "except for reasons of safety."

As Blood-Horse reported Tuesday, Monmouth Park has said that jockeys who refuse to accept rides on Friday's evening card will not be allowed to ride at the track for the rest of the meet.

[RELATED: Monmouth controversy brings uncertainty to Breen stable]

Which jockeys will choose to ride will not be known until entries for Friday's card are drawn Tuesday afternoon.

Monmouth racing secretary John Heims confirmed that he believes the ultimatum is "the right approach" for the track to take.

"If anybody doesn't feel safe, we're certainly not asking anybody – anybody – and we would never expect anybody to do something they don't feel safe doing," Heims told Horse Racing Nation. "However, the commission has a rule in place that is not changing. And if I don't feel safe today, I'm not going to feel safe tomorrow, the next day or the day after that, or a week later. And so if you're here, and you're exercising horses, and your intent was to participate, and now you're trying to say, I'm not participating, well, then you don't need to be here because the rule is not changing."

Steve Worsley, agent for Monmouth riders Antonio Gallardo and Jose Ferrer, was at the track Tuesday and told HRN that he doesn't know whether they will choose to ride. "Everything's up in the air. They're still negotiating with – I don't know who they're negotiating with, to be honest with you. It's, you know, they're meeting with people, talking with people, seeing what their options are moving forward. I don't want to say definitively yes or definitively no. I really don't know."

Asked whether he had been notified that the jockeys planned to boycott, Heims said, "It's been an ongoing thing back and forth for days now with riders saying I am riding, I'm not riding, I'm riding, I'm not riding. So the back and forth certainly leads you to believe that there are underlying forces here that are coming into play. So if I felt safe Wednesday, on Thursday, I didn't feel safe but Friday, again, I felt safe – I'm not sure what the safety issue is. And once again, if you don't feel safe, nobody wants you ride if you're not going to feel safe."

Worsley said it was too soon to say whether the threat of being barred from the meet induce his clients to ride against their better judgment. "Ultimately, they have to decide what's best for them. And seems to me that they're being forced to do something that they may not want to do necessarily. This is a risky job, but the argument is going to be made that if somebody gets hurt – no matter whether it's true or not – the argument can be made that this would have never happened had we had access to the whips, and then there's some legal liability there. I mean, you're gonna, no matter what happens, jockeys are always going to get hurt. And as soon as the first jockey gets hurt here, that's what the argument is going to be."

Heims said, "The (Jockeys') Guild and the people involved in this all along have said this is not a boycott. But if there's not a boycott, it seems to have turned into a boycott real fast. And so if that's the intent and you want to boycott, claiming the rule is unsafe, we certainly understand that. We can respect it. But the regulatory authority that oversees every regulatory aspect of what we do here has implemented a rule that is not changing, and therefore the rule is the rule. … And we will find riders that – not that we're going to actively seek them – but riders that say that they're comfortable riding should have the opportunity to ride."

When it comes the rule itself, Worsley said, his clients oppose it "1,000 percent. None of this would be going on had their voices been heard before this."

Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez, co-chairman of the Guild, agreed that "jockeys have to do what they have to do for their own well being and their horses."

But for his part, Velazquez said of racing in New Jersey, "I will never go there with that rule. Absolutely not."