LARRY'S VIEW - RELIEF, BUT DAMAGE HAS BEEN DONE

By Larry Cassidy | Wednesday, October 12, 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 appears weekly on horseracingonly.com.au

It was a huge relief when the First Level Appeals Committee upheld my appeal against my three month suspension. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

The last couple of weeks have been very stressful. Even while riding at the races it has added extra pressure and stress that I probably don’t need.

Obviously there needed to be an enquiry and the Stewards are doing their job, but jockeys are only human. Like everybody else, I’m far from being perfect and sometimes I muck up.

If a jockey takes five or six rides at four or five meetings a week, how many rides does he have in a season? You do you maths.

They can’t all be perfect rides. A percentage of those … a small percentage … will be bad rides. That’s a fact of life.

Look, every jockey rides a bad race at some time and I have to admit my ride on Trump was a bad ride, but that is all that it was.

I rode two winners that day. I should have been going home happy, but I went home absolutely pissed with myself, because I rode a bad race.

That came about because of what the horse did and the decisions I made, but I don’t want people to have the perception out there that it was more than that, because that is all that it was. The final decision of the Stewards was that it was a bad ride. The trainer wasn’t happy, but he accepted it was a bad ride.

Not everybody has let the matter rest there though.

It is an old saying in racing that people talk through their pocket. I understand that and I understand the importance of punters to racing. I realize that Trump was a $1.70 favourite and the expectation on the performance of a horse running at that price has added fuel to the issue … but people should accept it for what it really was and nothing more.

I feel some of the criticism leveled at me has really been over the top. Those people don’t know me, yet they are happy to make judgements not only on my ride, but seemingly some are happy to do so on my character as well.

That, again, is racing. It comes with the territory. Because of that … you shouldn’t listen to it, but you are only human and you can’t help hearing about what is being said. So, yes, it does hurt!

I know of rumours going around about myself. I also know they are one hundred percent not true. There are people out there that believe they are.

How do I prove that they are not?

You can’t, because people will still believe what they want to believe and as long as the rumours persist you’ll have people believing them.

There is someone spreading things about me that are totally untrue. If those people came up to me face to face, I guarantee they would not say what they are saying … but they are happy to do it out there, which obviously is frustrating for me because it can have an adverse affect on my reputation without me being able to do anything about it.

I’ll give you an example of some other nonsense I have had to put with over the last couple of weeks.

I got this phone call supposedly from a reporter who said he was from "The Australian". He wanted to put me on the phone with a punter who had backed Trump. When I refused he then asked me if I was going to Ipswich that day to ‘pull up a few horses’.

I obviously hung up on him. Subsequent to that I have established that it was a prank call made in really bad taste. I have found out that someone did it as a joke, taped me and then played it to all his mates. What kind of person does that?

That might seem insignificant to some people, but it is really upsetting given the stress I’m under … and then I’ve got to contend with something like that.

The bottom line is that I feel although my name has been officially cleared by the First Level Appeals Committee, some real damage has been done.

What people don’ realize is that a charge like that can kill your career. It stops you from going overseas, if I wanted to go overseas again. The only places overseas that I could go is Tasmania or New Zealand after being charged and found guilty under that rule.

So it has very serious repercussions for me on the international front while the rumours are setting out to complicate my life even more.

It is not an easy situation for me. It is certainly unpleasant, but jockeys are faced with different types of challenges throughout their careers and I’ll just look at this as one more challenge to overcome.

Whether the ‘Trump issue’ is behind me now is still unclear as Queensland Stewards consider their option to appeal the First Level Appeal Committee’s decision to QCAT, but I obviously just want to move on from here as best I can.

In conclusion, I would like to sincerely thank all of those people who have supported me during this trying period.

Nobody liked my ride on Trump but, contrary to what some media outlets would have you believe, there were plenty of people who supported my appeal against the original finding and the penalty imposed upon me.

Their support is much appreciated.

Till next week,
Larry

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