LARRY'S VIEW - A SCARE AND A SUCCESS AT IPSWICH

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, June 22, 2012

Larry Cassidy currently has forty-two Group 1 successes behind his name. He is a multiple Premiership winning jockey having taken out three titles in Sydney and one in Brisbane. Larry’s View, the personal blog of this top class rider will appear on horseracingonly.com.au every Friday, workload permitting.

Wow! That’s all I can say about the way Ipswich Cup day unfolded for me.

For the first time in twenty-five years of race riding I had a horse have a heart attack underneath me. That the incident involved a really close call involving the safety of spectators made it a bit dramatic and seemingly gave those outside of racing with little knowledge of the sport an opportunity to once again give racing some unwarranted, bad publicity. In truth, it was just an unfortunate moment which sometimes (relatively rarely) occurs on the racetrack … as it can, in fact, occur anywhere!

As sad as that outcome was, the day ended on a successful note for me when Diet’s last race victory sparked a celebration from the syndicate owners of enormous proportions seldom seen at the track.

I would rather talk only about the success, but the number of questions that I have fielded concerning what goes through a jockey’s mind when you are on a horse in distress and what really happened on Saturday has led me to cover both the scare and the success, but please don’t mistake the scare part of the story for sensationalism. It is just a matter-of-fact account of the view of what happened from a rider’s perspective and is given in the hope it will help give genuine race-goers a better understanding of what can happen out there!

THE SCARE:
I drew very wide on Viva Lass in the fifth race and my instructions were to go forward and sit outside the leader … to be right there.

We got where we wanted to be but, about the 600, I could feel her start to stop quite badly. At that time obviously we started to drift back through the field from the 600 until the home turn. As the field went past me everyone was giving me the short back and sides because I was stopping that fast as they were obviously diving to get out of my way.

As we straightened I was probably about three horses off the inside fence. My first thought was that she might have bled so I looked down at my breeches for any sign of that. At about the time I looked down and realized there was no blood, her legs started doing the strangest things. I’d never seen it before and straight away then I knew she had heart attack … or was having a heart attack.

Her leg was coming out that far. If there was a horse beside me it would have tripped it over.

Once I’d realized what was happening, I really grabbed hold of her and tried to stop her as fast as I could because, in those circumstances they can just drop … although often their momentum keeps them going.

Because her legs were doing strange things I had no control over her. I couldn’t steer her at all … and she slowly started to turn on a right angle, left hand turn and I slowly began to head to the outside fence.

Obviously I was trying to do what I could to stop her all the time, but when I got to about two metres from the outside fence and realized I was still going too fast and there was no stopping her, that’s when I thought it was best for me to jump off.

I jumped off nice and clean and her momentum just carried her on to the fence where she just did a complete somersault which was as clean as anything. That’s when I finally knew … because of the way she did that without reacting to the danger … that she was in a really bad way.

I quickly jumped up and saw that her head had come up. It did cross my mind that sometimes they can have a blockage which can clear and they can jump up again and she was that close to the crowd that would not have been a good idea.

So it was pretty much the moment I jumped off and she landed I thought the best thing to do was jump the fence and hold her head down. That’s what I did, because if you hold a horse’s head they can’t get up.

She had a pair of blinkers on so I was slowly trying to take them off and I was talking to her all the time, the best thing to do is try to be kind and try to keep her calm.

In the end it was a sad outcome. It always is on these rare occasions when something goes wrong to that degree … but what a blessing the security fence turned out to be. It kept the crowd back well behind the running rail,

If the situation was different … even with the horse coming at them I think the spectators probably wouldn’t even have moved back. They would probably have been thinking… oh, it will be alright. The horse will stop before it hits us. Alternatively, I don’t think they had space to move even if they did want to turn around and get out of there.

Look, there could have been serious injuries to spectators … so that security fence was a definite plus.

I see in one newspaper I was called a hero for preventing the horse from getting up and possibly trashing around again and perhaps going into the crowd again.

Do me a favour!

Apart from the fact that was unlikely to happen, heroes are people who save lives in floods and disasters and that. I think they got that description of me wrong. I was just trying to do the right thing!

I also think the newspapers got it wrong in publishing a colour picture of the scene after the horse had fallen. I think most people couldn’t see what was happening at the track and I think nobody needed to see more than they had already. That would just be sensible protocol.

I also think they should think twice about printing things that are probably written by non-racing people who say things like horses will do that when they are whipped or spooked. This horse wasn’t whipped or spooked. If they are writing about things they don’t understand, somebody should be wise enough not to print it.

THE SUCCESS:
On a happier note, if you ever wanted to see a good advertisement showing the pleasure involved in owning a racehorse, go to the photos in the website photo gallery of Diet’s win in the last race at Ipswich last Saturday.

The owners are a battling bunch of blokes and they are really enjoying their ride. It just shows how much fun you can have even if you just have a small interest in a horse.

They were excited when they got Diet because he was an ex-Darley horse. I think the reason that Darley got rid of him was not because he didn't have any ability, but rather it was because of the fact that he needed a lot of personal one-on-one attention because he was probably a bit difficult.

He was horse shy and I can imagine he would have been very difficult to ride work on earlier on. The horse is a lot better now than when I first rode him. Louise White has done a tremendous job with him and I think Glen Killen has also done a good job, because I think Glen rides him in a lot of his work … and I don’t envy him that!

The way Diet battled on under extreme pressure to keep his nose in front after chasing from a very wide draw is a credit to all concerned. That was his third win from his last four starts and his only loss there came in heavy going, so he is definitely a horse moving in the right direction.

That’s good reason to celebrate and the large band of owners did not miss the opportunity.

In the end, the scare and the success were just two parts of an on-going example of just how quickly fortunes change in racing.

The highs and the lows might be extreme but, if you are involved in this game, you just have to accept that both options are always in play. You would be foolish to think otherwise!

Till next week,
Larry

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