A group of permanently disabled Jockeys’ Guild members, troubled by the disappearance of the disabled jockeys’ fund and the unsatisfactory answers given by Guild officials to questions about the organization’s management, have sent an open letter to the Guild’s board of directors calling for the removal of president Wayne Gertmenian and the reinstatement of former manager John Giovanni in his stead:
Dr. Gertmenian has … failed to prove himself as a man who could be trusted to do what’s best for the Guild … We badly need a leader who understands and is familiar with the business of the Jockeys’ Guild to lead us through this crisis, to put the Guild back on track and salvage what is left of our organization.
An emergency meeting of the Guild Senate to discuss management has been scheduled for November 15 and more than 200 jockeys across the country have signed petitions calling for a change in leadership. Asked if he had any intention of stepping down, Gertmenian said, “I promised everybody as I went around the country the heat would fall on my head and I wouldn’t quit.” How noble.
Posted by JC in Jockeys' Insurance on 11/11/2005 @ 4:45 pm / Follow @railbird on Twitter
Breeders’ Cup Sprint runner-up and Vosburgh Stakes winner Taste of Paradise has been retired. The six-year-old has a tendon injury, discovered by trainer Richard Mandella after a recent gallop:
“When I ran my fingers down his leg, there was just the slightest little bump…. We took an ultrasound to see if there was a little swelling because he had hit himself or because there was actually a tear, and we found just a tiny lesion on the tendon. It was only about the size of a teardrop, but he wouldn’t have been able to perform at the level he had been his last few races, and it probably would have turned into a bow had we continued to race him.”
Mandella had hoped to run Taste of Paradise in the Cigar Mile on November 26.
Posted by JC in Horses on 11/11/2005 @ 3:45 pm / Follow @railbird on Twitter
– Eclipse voters, listen to trainer Richard Dutrow: Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Silver Train is being sent to Palm Meadows and won’t start again until 2006. Asked if missing the Cigar Mile on November 26 might affect the colt’s chances of being named champion sprinter, Dutrow replied, “He don’t belong getting sprinter of the year.”
– It only took a congressional hearing: Jockeys’ Guild representative Darrell Haire has called for Guild president Wayne Gertmenian to resign. “Gertmenian’s management has been virtually nonexistent for months, and staff has been left hanging out there…. If Gertmenian really cared about the jockeys, he’d step down, but I doubt if he will leave until he’s forced out,” said Haire.
– An unlucky horse turns lucky: Take a Shot was one of the 160 horses caught up in a tornado at Ellis Park on Sunday. He emerged uninjured from the storm to win an allowance race at Churchill Downs Tuesday afternoon. “This horse has had a hard-luck way of going his whole life,” said trainer Shane Warpool. “He went through a fence as a baby in a bad storm. In his last race at Ellis (on Sept. 3) he almost lost his eye. He caught a stone or something on the turf course. So he’s been a bad-luck guy. But this one time the luck worked out for him.”
– Such a nice article, such an unfortunate headline: Shebiscuit.
– Sorceror’s Stone is scheduled for surgery: A bone chip will be removed from the two-year-old’s left ankle. “He came out of [the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile] with just a little change in his left ankle and we X-rayed him and have decided to stop on him and do a little ankle surgery on him,” trainer Patrick Byrne said. “It’s just a little tiny fragment.” After resting for 60 days, Sorceror’s Stone will return to training at Gulfstream Park.
– Beware racing newspapers: “A financial adviser who stole £10million to fund his love of racehorses was jailed for 12 years yesterday. Graham Price even left an IOU for £7million in his bank’s safe. The 58-year-old, known to his loyal customers as ‘Mr Halifax,’ turned from honest businessman to crook after subscribing to a racing newspaper.”
Posted by JC in News on 11/09/2005 @ 7:00 pm / Follow @railbird on Twitter
