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Jockeys’ Insurance Archive

Tuesday Hit-and-Run

– The Jockeys’ Guild continues to recover from the frayed relationships and depleted coffers of the Wayne Gertmenian era. “It has been difficult,” said jockey Jon Court, one of 27 jockeys elected to the Guild’s Senate last week. “Some people like to hang on. But we were literally able to take that skeleton and throw it out.”
– At Woodbine, 35-year-old apprentice Dean Deverell wins four races in a week.
– Happy Ticket will face top older distaffer Oonagh Maccool on Saturday in the Fleur de Lis Handicap at Churchill Downs. “Obviously, the other mare is awfully good,” said owner Stewart Madison. “But one thing I know for sure is that my horse will definitely show up.”
– In the first Belmont since 2000 without the Derby or Preakness winner entered, the race’s TV ratings dropped 22% from 2005.
– What people really want to know about racing: “The people out there want to know what a horse eats, how a horse exercises, how he lives, what she does when she’s not training or racing. They long to find out about the people on horses’ backs or at their sides. People want to read Michael Matz’ life story. They want to hear what Edgar Prado thinks. They want Peter Brette to tell them what Barbaro feels like when he trots. What does a Kentucky Derby winner trot like? Now there’s something they can identify with at the PTA meeting.”

Posted in Jockeys' Insurance, News on June 13, 2006

Noted: March 22

– In today’s Derby Watch: Corinthian is off the Derby Trail; weekend Beyer numbers are out.
– Speed genes found? “A British scientist yesterday claimed to have made a ‘historic breakthrough‘ in the study of thoroughbred genetics, after a six-year research project produced the first proof of a relationship between specific genes and the individual performances of racehorses.”
– Kentucky congressman Ed Whitfield, who led hearings into the the jockeys’ insurance issue last fall, said that legislation amending the Interstate Horseracing Act to provide workers’ compensation to jockeys and backstretch workers could be ready in four weeks.
– Rockport Harbor’s injury-plagued racing career is over. Owner Rick Porter announced on Monday that Rockport was done racing and headed to a career at stud because of the foot injury that’s dogged the colt since the 2004 Remsen: “The wall of the hoof is cracked and the consensus is that he would need a minimum of 90 days turnout … There are no guarantees that the foot will heal 100%. Therefore, I have decided to retire him.”
– Steve Haskin joins Paul Daley in wondering why Mom’s Command isn’t on the Hall of Fame ballot this year. “Mom’s Command has slipped through the cracks again. After having her name on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2005, the 1985 New York filly Triple Crown winner was conspicuous by her absence this year.”

Posted in Jockeys' Insurance, News on March 22, 2006

Guild Sues Gertmenian

Jockeys’ Guild officials opened the organization’s annual assembly this Monday with a “painful” accounting of the Guild’s state at the time president Wayne Gertmenian was fired:

In reality, the Guild was stripped of most of its assets. “In fact, on the day [Gertmenian and former vice president Albert Fiss] were fired, they emptied out the bank accounts and wrote themselves $100,000 checks,” said Broad. “We were nearly bankrupt.”

In an effort to recoup some of the losses, a plan to sue Gertmenian and the rest of the Guild’s former management team was also discussed on Monday. Although Guild attorney Barry Broad said the lawsuit was likely to be filed within the next month, one was actually filed in California early this week.
The Guild is searching for a new national manager, with an ad seeking applicants running in the print edition of the Daily Racing Form. “Impeccable integrity” is required.

Posted in Jockeys' Insurance on March 1, 2006

Guild Missing More than Money

Yet another lawyer for Wayne Gertmenian claims that the checks the former Jockeys’ Guild president cashed the day he was fired were for money owed to him, reports Liz Mullen in the Sports Business Journal: “It was back pay and it was owed to him under his contract,” said attorney Mark Werksman. Guild lawyer Barry Broad alleges that not only did Gertmenian cash the checks without permission, but that he ran off with Guild memorabilia, including Bill Shoemaker’s boots and a bust of Eddie Arcaro. “We would like our money back,” Broad said. “We would also like Willie Shoemaker’s boots and Eddie Arcaro’s head back.”
The ongoing scandal is recapped in a lengthy LA Times article today. There’s not much new information (I’m assuming anyone landing on this site has a passing knowledge of the story), except for this bit:

Pepperdine, where Gertmenian, 66, is a longtime economics professor, is investigating questions about his resume. In an October hearing, U.S. representatives ridiculed his claim that he worked on U.S.-Soviet relations for the National Security Council during the Nixon and Ford administrations, while another organization told The Times that Gertmenian’s claim that he had served on its board of directors was false.

Looking for the link to Gertmenian’s resume (here), I came across this article from the Thoroughbred Times in 2001, when Gertmenian was brought into the Guild, which makes several familiar points about the fired president and his consulting company, Matrix Capital Associates:

Matrix is run out of Gertmenian’s Monrovia, California, home, Gaston said…. Matrix associates will not answer questions about its operation, Gaston said, and the company has been forced to put a “lockdown on the media” and others in the Thoroughbred industry because Gertmenian and Matrix employees and their families have been harassed….

Gertmenian’s resume on the Pepperdine Web site states that he held governmental positions during the Watergate era. In the 1975 Congressional Directory, he was listed as a special assistant to the secretary of Housing and Urban Development in ’74. President Richard M. Nixon’s former HUD Secretary, James T. Lynn, said that he did not remember Gertmenian. Nor did HUD Deputy Secretary James Mitchell or Northwestern University professor Donald Haider, a former White House fellow who worked closely with Lynn and Mitchell….

Gertmenian’s resume states that he functioned as chief detente negotiator in Moscow for the head of the National Security Council and as an emissary to Tehran for the secretary of commerce, but those duties could not be confirmed. John Stempel, Ph.D., director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy at the University of Kentucky, spent 24 years in the United States Foreign Service focusing on political and economic affairs in Africa, India, and Iran. From July 1975 through the summer of 1979, three months after the Iranian revolution, Stempel served in Tehran as the deputy chief of the political section for the State Department and was acting political consul.

Stempel said that most of the files for the U.S. Iranian embassy had been sealed and that seeking information that might be contained in those files would be “pretty hard.” He said, however, that if Gertmenian had been in Tehran during the years he served there he would have known him. “I can guarantee you he never showed up in Tehran as an emissary of anybody,” Stempel said….

Gertmenian’s statement that he serves on the board of directors of AmRus Life Insurance Co., a firm that is not listed with the California Department of Insurance, also could not be verified.

I am flabbergasted. How did this man manage to assume the Guild’s presidency and operate without much oversight for the past four years with this much stinking about his background from the start? Should there have been questions about Guild operations long before the October congressional hearings forced the matter?

Posted in Jockeys' Insurance on December 13, 2005

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