LARRY'S VIEW - RACE-DAY PROCEDURES WITH REGARD TO HORSES SHOULD BE BASED ON SEASONAL CONDITIONS

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, November 18, 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.

HRO blogger David Fowler began his latest blog by saying, ‘summer is in the air.’ He isn’t kidding. I don’t know what the temperature is in the commentary box is, but I can tell you it is no fun out there in the heat of the action.

I’m a very free sweater. Because I sweat so much … even in winter … I can lose a quarter-of-a-kilo a ride. Now, when we get these hot humid days, I’m losing half-a-kilo or more a ride.

When you consider that I’ve already lost one-and-a-quarter to one-and-a-half kilos off in the sauna that morning and you're already dehydrated when you get to the track, you’d think you wouldn’t have anything more to sweat out … but once you start riding it just pours out of you.

People say, when the weather is so hot you won’t need a sauna. That is the most stupid thing to say, because you have still got to get your weight off or keep the weight off. Sometimes, I have to admit, it’s hot … you're dehydrated … and you feel beside yourself.

If you get all of your weight off before you get to the track you are able to sip away on some fluids during the day.

I usually make up my own drink. It’s just stuff I use from a health-food place. I don’t like drinking Gatorade, because it tends to sit in my stomach too much. It just seems to splash around my stomach. It sounds awful, but I struggle to keep that down and it’s not a very nice feeling.

I drink lemon-detox quite a lot. I find that helps pick me up through the day, but there are a couple of things you can get from the health-food store that also sort of picks you up and helps keep you going through the day.

I sip away at that stuff, but what happens is you lose all the potassium out of your body and you start cramping up. Nothing you can drink will get that under control. It won’t because you are losing a lot of fluids through the day.

Take Wednesday for example. I’d only had two rides halfway through the card and my toes were already cramping up. I’ve got eight rides on Saturday. If it’s going to be hot, I’m going to lose an incredible amount of weight during the day. You lose all of the goodness out of your body and it becomes very hard.

In all honesty, if you know it is going to be a scorcher, there is no way you can look forward to going out for eight rides. Your professionalism kicks in and you do it, but it is not a preferred option for anybody.

Funnily enough, the sweat has no effect on you during a race. When you are around at the barrier you are sweating. I take my goggles off and I wipe my brow because I don’t want the sweat running down into my goggles.

You tend to sweat more again when you pull up. It’s not pouring off you through the race. It’s more when you pull up and when you are back in the jockey’s room that you just break right out.

There are certain signs that will tell you if you are taking things too far.

When I lose a lot of weight my voice goes funny. I can even start to lose my voice. When you lose too much weight … when I am talking, it’s like I can hear myself echoing in my head.

That’s one example of a specific state of being which will let you know you have lost too much weight and are heading for trouble. There are others and obviously your overall feeling at the time will tell you more.

So, taking all of that into account, nobody should begrudge a jockey a visit to the club doctor on race-day.

Another fallacy is that while I lose all of that weight on a hot race-day, at least I have a day or two in-between meetings to get my strength back up and re-charge my body, but that would just mean I would have to go through the whole process again.

If I have got into that position where I have lost weight, I try to stay light for the next meeting, so that I don’t have to do much to prepare for that next race-day, but that means I’m not getting too much sustenance, so it is a fine line that you walk.

If it's really hot I can have a sleep through the day or go to the movies with my wife Michelle and re-charge that way, instead of putting the weight back on and knowing I have to put the plastic suit back on and exercise through the middle of the day in the heat again.

I know there are people who prefer to put the weight back on to a degree, where they can, and then work it off again. That is a really rigorous cycle.

For myself though, I do what works best for me. You’ll find that I’m always heavier early in the week and then I slowly start bringing the weight off as the week goes on.

The bottom line, I guess, that when the weather gets as hot as it does here in Queensland, it really does affect me … as it affects some horses.

Horses that are highly strung obviously sweat up a lot. It is clear to me that race-day procedures with regard to the horses should not be the same in winter and summer.

Now everything seems to be based around Sky Channel filming the horses in the enclosure, and in my opinion horses are in there way too long on hot, humid days.

They are supposed to care about the animal, but, given that the heat of summer has arrived, they are having them in the enclosure and around at the barrier too long. To me, that is not being fair to the horses.

More definitely the horse’s schedule should be based on seasonal conditions. Wednesday was a pretty hot day. There was a bit of a breeze, but the horses were still in the enclosure too long … and the last couple of times I’ve ridden at Ipswich, they were in there way long. Way too long!

It was thirty-seven degrees at Ipswich on Tuesday. Thankfully there was no race-meeting then, but that’s the type of temperatures we can expect on ‘bad’
days.

You don’t want the horses out in the heat that long because it is not good for them and it is not good for punters because it can obviously affect the horse’s performance.

Authorities should not wait for the extra hot days before taking action.

They’ve got to change things to protect the horse, and that schedule change should happen now.

Surely Sky Channel wouldn’t have an argument against that.

Till next week,
Larry

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