The worst consequence that could beset me doing this, well apart from knocking a cup of coffee over the laptop, is perhaps misspelling, poor punctuation or grammar and too often delving into rambling and irrelevance, the outcome being a boring read.
The life of a columnist hey? It does give me a chance to note a line from comedian Steven Wright who once said he had a speed-reading accident. “I hit a bookmark….flew across the room.”
But this is no time for humour. Think of the consequences jockeys face every day they ride.
One of Australia’s pin-up jockeys Jamie Kah is in hospital with severe concussion, but thankfully cleared of brain injuries or any fractures.
Time will be her heeler. (It is worth noting that in Victoria, racing, like the AFL, imposes a 12 day stand-down period for concussion, before any clearance after testing is conducted. It is not surprising that there is no national policy – because there is no effective Racing Australia to mandate one - Nikita Berriman suffered concussion in a trackwork fall at the Sunshine Coast recently on a Tuesday morning and rode on the following Saturday.)
Craig Williams, who fell over the top of Kah’s horse, was able to post thumbs up pictures (well as happy as you can be) from hospital and home, with his collarbone to be mended today, broken ribs will soon heal, as will a busted finger and he will back supporting the Ukrainian war warriors and giving Gettysburg address like dissertations pre- and post-race as soon as possible.
Ethan Brown, a rising star of the sport, is in another hospital ward, still too weak to talk, after serious internal damage to his liver and kidney. He will be home in the next 24 hours but out of the game for an extended period.
Stewards are yet to finalise reports surrounding the incidents, but noted Kah’s was racing keenly and appeared to clip the heels of Veight, falling, with Williams’ mount Dubenenko tripping in less than a split second.
Stewards have already interviewed five other jockeys around Brown’s fall, which looks like competitive riding where the margin for error is minimal, and the error might only be a miniscule wander by a horse under pressure.
Jockeys do have brain fade’s, Australia’s finest James McDonald admitted such last week, an incident that luckily did not cause a fall or damage other than a suspension and subsequent controversial appeal that allows the sports leading actor to play on the biggest stage on Golden Slipper day. Punters will well know what the term used in McDonald’s case of “rounding down” – to get to Saturday, means.
A precedent, well no said Appeals chair Richard Beasley, in formulating the outcome where stewards reduced a 14-meeting suspension for a high range incident to six with guilty plea, exemplary record and the big races he’d miss, before more discounts than a late night television shopping show were granted in yesterday’s appeal. (He did forfeit his $200 appeal fee though if that matters!)
"If you consistently ride at a standard where you look after your fellow riders, that's where you get a reward (down the track)," McDonald said.
Well that is true, but whether it is James McDonald or Jimmy Smith, the same should apply to all.
Just as all riders are paid the same fee per race, no matter where they are in the state, though J Smith will not be chasing some $215,000 in possible winning percentages on Saturday, not to mention slipping over to Hong Kong for their Melbourne Cup, the Derby on Sunday.
Yet all face the same consequences for not only their actions, but perhaps more so often those of others, or the very animals they ride.
Of course, it is a global sport, but argument that jockeys are the world’s best sportsmen can easily be submitted in debate.
Last week Fumio Matoba, rode his 7400th winner at Ohi on Japan’s second circuit. He is 66 and had his first ride in 1973.
As we head into Cheltenham this week, it is worth recalling the career of legendary Irish jumps jockey A P McCoy, 20 times champion jockey, the 2010 BBC Sports personality of the year and knighted by the Queen.
And along the same way came countless broken bones from both collarbones, shoulder blades, lower vertebrae, ribs, cheekbones, legs, ankles, arms, wrists, thumbs, punctured lungs, chipped teeth and 4000 plus winners (and think all over two miles plus, countless jumps fraught with danger – imagine the stamina and strength required, let alone courage).
You see dangers in the art of riding are very ecumenical.
It led me to an old American study by Dr Robert Kerlan, an orthopaedic surgeon by trade, team physician to the St Louis Rams. He was a sports doctor to the most fabled of American athletes (like Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) while also serving to Hollywood Park jockeys.
After receiving and working with a growing proportion of “banged-up” jockeys and marvelling at their recuperative powers: “He and a University of Texas researcher named Jack Wilmore undertook a study of 420 professional athletes, testing conditioning, reflexes, coordination and strength, and were astonished at the results. Jockeys graded higher than all other professional athletes,” a report in the Baltimore Sun wrote on his passing.
"I [had] thought they were just riding an animal -- and the animal was doing all the work," Kerlan said. He learned how wrong he was.
“Instead, he (Kerlan) calculated, each race a jockey rode was the equivalent -- for the rider -- of running an 800-meter race. Looked at this way, their legendary powers of recuperation were no mystery, for these riders were racing up to seven times a day, five or six days a week, 52 weeks a year."
“They had the lowest body fat of any athletes by far, and 80 percent of them could bench press more than their own body weight. These were perhaps the most finely conditioned athletes in the world, a discovery that helped usher in the era of year-round training.
“The discipline they get on their own.”
Legendary sportswriter Red Smith thought so too. "If Bill Shoemaker were 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, he could beat anybody in any sport," Smith wrote 30 years ago.
"Pound for pound he is the greatest living athlete."
Kerlan put it this way: "Jockeys face a tremendous chance of being killed or suffering severely crippling injuries -- more than basketball players or football players or hockey players. But I think they accept this. They remind me of wartime pilots, they have the same mental outlook. I don't think any pilot thinks he is going to die on a particular flight, but way in the back of his mind, he knows it is a possibility, and so does the jock."
So as the Rugby League season continues with its surprises and hits and the AFL gets rolling again Thursday, just remember today, every day, not just Slipper Day or All Star Mile day, Australia’s greatest athletes will be doing what they do, without fear but loaded with risk, and of course the lure of reward.
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