Lila At the Beach died at Pleasanton yesterday, no details from the CHRB. She was six years old and had been put to the whip 33 times, most recently Oct 27 at that same track. She becomes the 94th kill in proud-of-our-safety-record California this year.
Then there were these notes from the 2nd at Evangeline Wednesday:
“Miss Headlines…was in full stride and had her hind end knocked out from underneath her…Candy On the Run…was hit by a careening rival…Tcb Eye B Famous was bothered twice by the same out of control rival…Lenas Long Night was off a bit slow, then ran side to side careening into whatever rival was near her, hitting two fairly hard, brushing another, finally jock threw the crop and rode with two reins choosing safety first.”
Got rid of the whip – “choosing safety first.” Then of course, this addendum, illustrating (again) what’s really important here: “There was a stewarts [sic] inquiry and after a stewarts [sic] review Lenas Long Night was disqulified [sic] from sixth place to seventh place for interference with other horses in the race.”
Lenas, by the way, is but three years old. Imagine how terrified this poor girl (a flight animal, I remind) must have been – “careening, hitting, brushing.” Horrible.
All the miles we worked or galloped horses on various tracks we never used or carried once we realized their use did not have the horse run faster. It was even proven that non-use of whips did not effect form of horses running at we believe was in New Jersey when their use for a short time was not allowed. We have attained the fastest time of the day with no whip use on the horse we were working out. We rely on the relationship with a horse to avoid problems & to accomplish things. Not force from fear or supposed domination theory.
Any good rider always was trained not to use the whip when a horse was giving its full effort. I once heard a trainer instruct an apprentice, “never use your whip when a horse is giving you their best.” “Don’t punish a horse, when they are giving you all of their heart.” The jockey-in-training questioned, “But, what do I do if the trainer comes after me demanding why didn’t you go to the whip?” The response was to tell the trainer, only mucksacks abuse horses, you hired a race rider.
years ago a met a trainer who said if you hit the horse with a whip you are telling him or she that they were doing something wrong do you bit your children take the time to train the horses the proper way so they don’t get the wrong signal . NO ANIMAL NEEDS TO BE HIT BECAUSE OF YOUR POOR TRAINING!!!!!!!
Spot-on, Marie. Thank you.
What will the stewards or the CHRB do about the jockey throwing the whip away? Also, what will the chartwriter be taught from this revealing of a nugget of truth about whips?
Well, I guess that chartwriter and jockey both just debunked the whole crop thing with one sentence. I thought the racing world’s only really argument for the crop is that it’s needed for safety??
Seems like it didn’t help here at all, and he knew he’d be safer without it! How pathetic that it needs to be made known that a jockey can ride with two reins instead of with a crop.