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Lynch and Williams will receive compensation from the ERB Fallon will receive nothing. What is the logic of that?Fallon loses more than either by not riding group winners.Do they expect his retainers to take the place of the ERB when he cannot ride for his retainers? What kind of justice is that?
Clivex<br>As far as the US goes there are many jockeys who are as good as Fallon that they could use there. In England the problem is shortage of first class jockeys. Look how far down the pecking order they had to go last Saturday just to get any jockey. The creme de la creme does  not extend far in England  (pardon my french I write it so poorly). And French jockeys are so bad it does not matter who they put up there. In my opinion  they should hire Franki away from the Arabs. He rode beautifully in the Leger last year for Coolmore.He would surely relish the chance to ride a group winner again.
Dear grasshopper<br>We go to extremes. Special cases make bad laws. If the handicapper  asked to check where he kept his winkle he would be extending his authority to breaking point.<br>What does the law say about running horses to get them fit? Must a trainer always instruct his jockey to win at all costs?Jockeys have been banned for trying too hard; for not trying hard enough and for not giving a horse the best chance… by people who have never ridden in a race in their lives…..but I degress  I dont think the jockeys have been cautioned for riding with their winklers misplaced.
There is a lot of ink spilt attempting to equate holding an enquiry into the actions of a jockey and those of professionals of other pursuits.
A jockey is supposed to follow the instructions of the trainer or the owner. Most other professionals are hired to use their professional judgement.<br>How often have we heard a jockey saying "when I realized I could not win I eased up on my horse.No point on giving him a hard race when I found out I could not win" Yet nobody is called "in" for making such statements. ( the jockey is looking after his owner’s interest,not the betting public). Sir Percy for example got a hard race in the Guineas even when he could not win. It nearly cost him participation in the Derby. Or do we have different standards for different stables? We give horses "preparation" races if they are from "big" stables if not we ban them for using the race course to train their horses.<br>Cash Asmussen once said "They bet two quid on my horse and then want to tell me how to ride"Punters have to realise that all horses are not tryers in every race they run. <br>Aidan O’Brien’s horses improve from race to race so a punter won’t rush to back his 3yo’s first time out.But Aidan will never be called in for using the racecourse as a training arena even if that is what he does. A jockey who does not follow his owners (or trainers) instructions may not be reengaged. There was a big row between Frankie and the sheiks when he did not follow instructions recently.Most jockeys face the same problems daily.<br>Finally there has been a rash of incidents where jockeys eased up thinking they had won only to lose in the final strides. There is a basic conflict between the handicapper and the trainer. The handicapper uses the races to evaluate the horses. The trainer is trying to win and the handicapper is looking for a draw. As long as this conflict exists we will not have horses winning by more than is necessary since to do so only helps the handicapper to defeat the trainer. Finally we must remember, jockeys are paid by the owner not by the handicapper!
Some time ago the Aga Khan refused to support English Racing because he thought he was getting a bad deal from the English Racing authorities. Something about disqualifying his horses based on inadequate testing. There is a rumor in the Irish Independent that Coolmore feels agreeved that their No 1 jockey has no time limit on his suspension that they can use to make racing plans for the future. What would be the effect on English racing if Coolmore decided to not race in England,and race only in France, Ireland, Italy and the US?
The most wonderful poker face that ever sat on a race horse. How many jockeys will drop their whip and snatch another jockey’s and justify it by saying "he didn’t need it, he was not going to win anyway".
In my opinion Lester is the best of all times based on his record of classis winners and total winners.
So many posts were about what should be done to Fallon if he is guilty. My question is what should be done if he is found to be innocent?The first release said that to allow them to ride would somehow create ( in the public’s mind) the impression that races were still "fixed"while they were still riding.<br>This seems to imply that they are all guilty. Does such a statement not prejudice their right to a fair trial?
I suggest you go to Google to find out more about drugs in horse racing. I believe bute is used to stop horses bleeding (breaking a blood vessel which causes shortage of breath )and is legal everywhere in the US.<br>PS from this explanation you can see I am not an expert
Time has proven that Aidan made the wrong decision in running both Georg W and Horatio N in their most recent runs.However that is the price you pay when you are in business. You make decisions. Some are right some don’t work out.Horses break down on the gallops, coming back from injuries, between  the winning post and the unsaddeling enclosure. If Aidan had the time to do a cost-benefit analysis he might have made a different decision. However as a trainer he made the best decision he could. If the jockey disagrees he can  lead the horse back to the barn but he will probably end his career by doing that, no trainer wants to be confronted by a jockey saying he was put up on an unsound horse by a trainer who should know better.
The question is; how would you decide if you were the trainer and did not know the tragic outcome of the wrong decision? If you were the jockey what would you do if you thought the trainer made the wrong decision. Does the jockey have a third choice rather than just doing what he is told to do, by the trainer, if he believes the horse is "wrong"?
<br>The following article appeared in the Bloodhorse.com <br>I share it with the forum readers <br>Oxford Prince died in front of me, a breath before the finish line at Timonium, some 25 years ago. His leg had broken, sending him into a ghastly tumble, his jockey kissing off the ground like a stone on a still pond. When the vet came, the colt lifted his leg obediently, and the cannon bone swung from its middle as if hinged. The needle came quickly, and Oxford Prince sank to the dirt and was gone.
What I had seen came as an explosion. I was a kid at the time, and though I knew of Ruffian’s death, I thought this kind of horror was a great rarity. I assumed that such a wrenching event would be huge news, spurring the soul-searching and reform that you see when an athlete dies in any other sport. But nothing happened. There was a sodden weight in the air, a quiet grief, yet the card proceeded with no comment, only a few remarks of "that’s racing." I sat against the rail and cried.
On Preakness day, as I watched Barbaro standing on the track, turning his ruined leg in plaintive circles, I thought of that day at Timonium. Now, as then, there is a stricken horse whose sport failed to prevent his injury. There is anguish, shibboleths of "that’s racing," and in a situation that screams for sweeping action to stop this from happening again, the familiar passive resignation. It was the same for Timely Writer, Go for Wand, Prairie Bayou, and so many others. We love and mourn our horses, yet our hands are largely idle.
We speak of catastrophic breakdowns as if they are blue-moon anomalies. They are anything but. The most comprehensive investigation of breakdowns, the Equine Racing Injury Reporting System, found a rate of 1.6 fatalities in every 1,000 starts. Other studies have found almost identical results.
By this measure, every horse has a one in 624 chance of dying in each race. If that statistic held true for the 469,644 individual performances in the United States and Canada last year, 753 horses died in races in 2005. That’s more than two per day. Untold more died in training; while there is scant information on training deaths in America, horses in a Japanese study suffered more fractures in training than in racing. The fate of jockeys follows. Virtually every year, at least one jockey is killed as a result of a horse’s breakdown. Others are paralyzed or severely injured.
A comparison to the National Football League puts this death rate into perspective. Every week, each of 32 teams fields between 40 and 47 players; at minimum, 1,280 players produce 20,480 performances per 16-game regular season. Even if every team fielded only the minimum number of men, if football players died at the same rate as racehorses, 33 players — more than two per week — would die in the regular season alone. That the NFL would tolerate such a thing is inconceivable, yet racing does just that.
This is not to say that we do nothing for our horses. No athletes in any sport are as closely monitored for soundness, as the system of multiple pre-race veterinary inspections attests. And we have made some promising, albeit piecemeal, efforts to study breakdowns. This is admirable, but the statistics demonstrate emphatically that we aren’t doing nearly enough.
NASCAR offers a model that the industry ought to emulate. When Dale Earnhardt died in the 2001 Daytona 500, NASCAR launched an exhaustive safety research campaign, then implemented changes with alacrity, installing new head restraints, shock-absorbing track walls, crash data recorders, and reconfigured cockpits. Earnhardt’s death was NASCAR’s fourth in nine months; in the ensuing five years, not one driver has died.
In breakdowns, racing has a massive, deadly serious problem, and we all know it. The Thoroughbred industry has a moral obligation to horses and jockeys to pursue solutions on a grand scale and with the utmost urgency. We must summon the best minds, create a truly comprehensive, uniform injury reporting system, and fund a slew of controlled studies. Most importantly, we must be willing to make the difficult choices that follow.
We need to do this not only for Barbaro, but for the hundreds of Oxford Princes who pay for our ignorance and inaction with their lives.
Laura Hillenbrand is the Eclipse Award-winning author of Seabiscuit
‘Magnier and Tabor are worth at least 500 million quid put together. Do you honestly think they would care if they lost 100k or so on him??? I watched them walk down by the stands towards where Horatio was being treated. I saw the looks on their faces – I just didn’t want to admit what had happened to myself. ‘
Dear jackane
It’s not what you lose it you don’t run. It’s what you win if you do.<br>
Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. David used the word concerns. That alone to me warrants taking defensive action.Any concerns will do. Unfortunately connections probably had bet a lot on the horse.and this is the "big one". I know that should make no difference but it does.If the concern is slight it can sway a decision. Then again Kierin and Aidan are incredibly smart about these things so their decision must be respected.
Burroughhill <br>Surely you are overstating the case for the defense. You don’t have to think he will breakdown. Just that he is causing Fallon to have second thoughts or to think he is having second thoughts. When in doubt  pull him out. I bet Fallon learned something today. Too bad the price was so high. But that is racing as Magnier said yesterday. " today is my day"…….tomorrow? who knows
Probably a very ordinary Derby. When horses finish in a bunch it is difficult to believe they are all great horses. More probably they are all ordinary. For example the third horse was Coolmore’s 3rd choice. The second is a maiden! That must mean something.The 4th beat the 2nd last time they ran.How many would beat the 4yo ‘s in the King George? None in my opinion.Imagine the pleasure of having sold Sir Percy for a princely sum and using half the money to back him anti post to win the Derby!
