LARRY'S VIEW - A STARK REMINDER OF THE DANGERS THAT WE FACE

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, July 1, 2011

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.

Every now and then we all get a stark reminder of how badly things can go wrong when something goes amiss with a horse mid-race.

The Stewards’ Report from the third race at Mornington on Tuesday is pretty clinical in describing the incidentinvolving Gothic Armageddon, the mount of Darren Gauci. It reads in part: ‘Near the 1900 metres Gothic Armageddon became unbalanced and lost its stride, and when being eased from the race by jockey D Gauci, initially shifted out and then shifted in abruptly …. Consequently, Gothic Armageddon broke through the inside rail and jockey D Gauci was dislodged … After the incident Gothic Armageddon collapsed and died.’

An incident like that is lot more scary to watch or be involved in than that report suggests. While it was a sad ending for the horse and a frightening experience for the rider, anyone who saw the incident will agree that the outcome could have been far worse as the other two horses who were hampered by Gothic Armageddon’s erratic path could also have crashed down with their riders.

It was nobody’s fault. There was no warning and all three jockeys involved just had to ride their luck.

Sadly, it was confirmed on Wednesday that Darren Gauci has a compressed fracture of a vertebra in the lower back following Tuesday’s fall, an outcome which highlights just how dangerous it can be out on the track.

My best wishes for a swift and full recovery goes out to Gauch. We all look forward to having him back in the saddle.

There is very little a rider can do when something of an extreme nature like a heart attack strikes a runner, but there are other occasions when the jockey will have advance warning of the problem developing underneath him.

I think the most common example of that is when a horse bleeds. When a horse bleeds badly it is quite noticeable. You can be travelling well and you start to let down and all of a sudden there is nothing there. It’s almost like you have run into a brick wall.

My first instinct is to look down. The blood can come back and get on your pants, but even if there is not any blood in sight you know something is wrong. I normally have a couple of looks because the first instinct is that they might have bled. You can feel it. It’s like they float underneath you.

It’s quite a hard feeling to explain, but at least with that advance notice you are able to stop pushing them out and if they've bled severely you can pull them up and jump off.

When a horse breaks down on the other hand, it’s like a massive big dip.

There your first instinct is to try and hold their head up. The moment you let their head go they can topple over. You do need to get off, but you can’t just jump out of the saddle.

You just sort of have to time it where you can jump off and still hold onto the reins because you obviously want to help the horse. Once you are off you just try to keep them calm. I put my arm around them.

I’ve had probably more than a dozen horses in my career who have broken down in the running and luckily … touch wood … they’ve all stayed on their feet. On at least one occasion I remember a horse breaking down where, if she had have fallen inwards, I probably would have been hit by three or four other horses.

There are other occasions when the horse is not bleeding and it hasn’t broken down … but you still feel something is not quite right.

You have the option to pull the horse out of the race if you have a high level of concern, but you’ve obviously got to weigh up that decision very carefully. I always first try the horse but, if I still think something is wrong, then I will ease down on it.

Kent Desormeaux famously retired Big Brown from the Belmont when that runner was attempting to land the Triple Crown in America because of his concern for the horse when he found there was ‘nothing there’ when he asked the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner for his effort.

In every post-race examination, no medical reason could be found to explain Big Brown’s lethargy.

I have actually pulled two horses out of a race.

One was in a long distance race in New Zealand. It came out of the gates and I thought it had broken down, so I pulled it out of the race.

What it had actually done … it had hit itself. It’s like hitting your funny-bone. By the time I pulled it up, it was fine.

As far as I knew, when I made my decision, I thought it had done something severe to itself, but it hadn’t. So it is obviously a fine line when making a decision like that.

While you always look after the horse, you as a rider are obviously also at risk when unfortunate things happen to your horse or, of course, others runners who might cross your path.

Again I’ve been relatively lucky in that regard.

There was one occasion where I thought I was gone. About twenty years ago in New Zealand two horses fell in front of me. They fell sideways in front of me … and I closed my eyes. I knew that was it. I was gone!

One second later I opened my eyes and my horse was still on its feet. It had galloped over the top them. I think that was the biggest near-miss I’ve ever had.

I have had race falls but, like I say, I have been lucky. In fact, the majority of my injuries have happened in the barrier stalls.

The race is obviously where the real danger lies though.

Every jockey knows … it might sound silly … but every jockey knows that everytime you go out there’s a possibility that you are coming back in an ambulance, or, you aren't coming back.

It’s a one-in-a-million chance it is going to happen, but it can happen.

Jockey’s do know that, even if they don’t think about it.

Till next week,
Larry

More articles