Mallpractice

[Alydar in California]

    Mall,

      Just kidding with the title. It has come to my attention that you have been mauling little Julie Krone on a different site. If you will be so obliging as to attack her here, I will try to defend her. I think she\'s kind of cute. Perhaps you will prove malleable (couldn\'t resist).

[Mall]

And here I thought from the title that this was going to take me to task for tabbing Davis as the 1st to flip, now that it\'s known that Harn will plead guilty this morning. Per JB, the disclosure today that all three have for the past yr been collecting on counterfeit copies of uncashed tix qualifies as \"all hell breaking loose\", especially for my friends at Autotote. At least I was right about the addition of a certain respected and popular NYorker, none other than Mayor Rudy, recently described in the WSJ as the \"embodidment of credibility.\"

My beef with Julie and the press coverage of Julie has nothing to do with how she looks. She spent a considerable period of time before her retirement riding while she was taking powerful psychotropic drugs for clinical depression, something which was not disclosed to the betting public, trainers, owners, or other jockeys. The way I see it, her conduct placed the property and safety of others at risk without their knowledge, something which Mall, who is all in favor of widely available treatment & removing the medieval stigma attached to mental illness, does not approve of.

[Alydar in California]

Mall wrote: \"My beef with Julie and the press coverage of Julie has nothing to do with how she looks.\"

You need to change your priorities.

\"She spent a considerable period of time before her retirement riding while she was taking powerful psychotropic drugs for clinical depression,\"

  The poor thing. That\'s a tough fight.

  \"something which was not disclosed to the betting public, trainers, owners, or other jockeys.\"

   An enlightened bunch if ever there was one.

  \"her conduct placed the property and safety of others at risk without their knowledge,\"

   Does the conduct of owners and trainers ever put Julie\'s safety at risk? What should we do about this? How many riders and trainers have or had drug and alcohol problems? I can think of many, including four of the greatest riders who ever lived. Did these riders tell the owners and public before they sought help? If not, where was Mall\'s outrage?

[JimP]

Mall: What about all the drugged horses that the trainers put Krone on? Putting her neck at risk without her knowledge.

[Mall]

Julie competed at the highest levels, so I doubt that there are very many owners who knowingly placed her safety at risk. Are there trainers who place the safety of jockeys at risk? Yes, of course, and I feel even more strongly about them, because the reason is usually money, as opposed to trying to overcome a disease. Absolutely there have been and are trainers and jockeys with undisclosed alcohol and drug problems, who put the safety and property of others at risk, which is every bit as bad or worse than anything Julie Krone has ever done, but in my mind that doesn\'t excuse what she did. My outrage on these and many other matters was always there, but I hadn\'t yet discovered the world of Bds, something which some may very well wish was still the case.

[Alydar in California]

Mall,

   OK. You are angry at a few owners, many trainers, and many riders. So far, you have named only Julie, whom you are more forgiving toward because she was quite ill. Let\'s hear the others. I expect your condemnations to be longer and louder.

[TGJB]

This is a complete non-sequitor, but:

When Julie was starting out she rode first call for John Forbes in New Jersey, and Forbes was training a lot of horses I was managing. One day she was riding an allowance sprinter called Lauren\'s Quest, and as they straightened out for home the horse collapsed. Julie was in tears, and said she had heard something snap, and begged anyone who would listen to \"please put him out of his misery.\"

Well, not exactly. Turned out the horse had heat exhaustion, got up, came back to run and win 7 days later, and several more times.

But-- she was a terrific rider, and you have to love a gal who hits a rival jock who almost dropped her with a chair in a jock\'s room brawl.

[Alydar in California]

JB wrote: \"she was a terrific rider, and you have to love a gal who hits a rival jock who almost dropped her with a chair in a jock\'s room brawl.\"

   Yes. And you have to love a girl who, while doing TV here, used to bounce around near the walking ring at Hollywood Park, short dress flying every which way, acting very much like an ecstatic, effervescent beach ball. The thought of her being depressed is depressing as hell.

[Mall]

Let\'s suppose, for sake of argument, that I had a list of 2k jockeys, headed by PVal, who rode on illegal drugs which risked the safety of other jockeys. I do not see how what those on the list did or didn\'t do would have anything to do with the limited question I thought we were discussing, which is whether Julie\'s decision to continue riding after she was diagnosed with clinical depression and given powerful prescription drugs was right or wrong, good or bad. It is only after that question is answered that it makes sense to me to discuss how good or how bad what she did was in comparison to others.


On an entirely unrelated matter, but one I found outrageous at the time & am reminded of by Jurmela\'s MJ post, to the best of my knowledge no one from the media ever mentioned the central issue in the much publicized high stakes golf game which was one of the reasons MJ ended up taking a break from the NBA & making a fool of himself playing minor league baseball. Everyone involved stipulated that MJ lost $1 million & then \"negotiated\" with the winner and paid only $300k. There is a name for people who do this which derives from the early days when British bookmakers used to flee to Wales to avoid paying bets. Why no one covered this angle of the story & why anyone would believe anything MJ says at this point are mysteries to me.

[magicnight]

Mall;

Put yourself in her boots. You are one of the great riders in the world. Without that, you are just another button-cute 97 pound young woman. You have clinical depression. As a part of addressing that problem you are going to .... quit riding?

Give one thousand people that choice. How many quit? Low single digits, if not zero. Be fair.

Alydar;

Did you ever hear Julie\'s race call from Belmont Park? A sloppy track turned a big field into a 3-horse field. Durkin let Julie do the call and it was a hoot. \"He\'s gonna need a bath from his toes to his nose!\"

It still bugs me that the only Belmont I\'ve missed since \'89 was Julie\'s on Colonial Affair. Racing needs Julie every bit as much as she apparently needs racing.

Bob

[Silver Charm]

Jerry,
     Your story about Julie riding a Forbes horse that you were advising on reminds me of another similar Julie story. In 1987 Forty Niner had just lost a heartbreaking stretch duel by a neck to Alysheba in the old Marlboro Cup. A race that was run in track record time. Laffit Pincay was the rider and after the race he told the connections, Woody Stephens and Claiborne Farm, that the horse needed blinkers. The next race out for Forty Niner was not the  traditional step of the Jockey Club Gold Cup, back then run at 1-1/2 miles, but the NYRA mile(now the Cigar Mile). However Pincay was not the rider because there was a jockey strike or walkout, whatever you want to call it. There had been a lot sabre rattling going back and forth that if Pincay did\'nt ride the horse in the NYRA then he would not ride the horse in the Breeders Cup. Pincay being President of the Jockey\'s Guild at the time stated there was no way he would cross the picket line and he did\'nt. The rider of record that afternoon in the NYRA was none other than \"Billy Fox\". He managed to hold on tight enough for the entire eight furlongs and Forty Niner won.
     Now we get to Julie. Somehow she landed the ride on Forty Niner despite having little or no experience in a race of this magnitude. Seth Hancock of Claiborne Farm said he had seen Julie ride at Monmouth that summer and he was impressed with her. The Breeders Cup was at Churchill Downs that year and the field was \"loaded\" with the likes of Alysheba, Seeking the Gold, Personal Flag, Waquoit, Cutlass Reality, etc. As they reached the half-mile pole things got a little tight and suddenly Forty Niner was pulled-up, a la Thunderello, but then inexplicably restarted once he was last in the field.
     As the field neared the wire Alysheba once again proved his greatness by holding off a late charge from Seeking the Gold to win. However, the image of Forty Niner flying down the middle of the racetrack to finish fourth still makes me sick to my stomach. When Julie was questioned later on why she pulled the horse up, her explanation was, \"she thought she felt the horse take a bad step and that he was breaking down\".

[Alydar in California]

Mall wrote: \"Let\'s suppose, for sake of argument, that I had a list of 2k jockeys, headed by PVal, who rode on illegal drugs which risked the safety of other jockeys.\"

     Why, for sake of argument, is PVal on top? It has been a long time since PVal\'s problems have surprised anyone. Using him defeats the purpose. (I want to add that he\'s my all-time favorite rider.) Think of riders at the very top, Mall. The very top. I want to see you go after them for withholding information.

\"I do not see how what those on the list did or didn\'t do would have anything to do with the limited question I thought we were discussing, which is whether Julie\'s decision to continue riding after she was diagnosed with clinical depression and given powerful prescription drugs was right or wrong, good or bad.\"

I see what you\'re trying to do, and I\'m not going to let you do it. What you are doing amounts to selective prosecution of Julie.

\"It is only after that question is answered that it makes sense to me to discuss how good or how bad what she did was in comparison to others.\"

Nonsense. You\'re skipping history as tragedy and heading straight to history as farce. Please give me your lengthy condemnations of the sinners who came before Julie. If you look really hard, you might even find a couple of men.

[Alydar in California]

I want this on top so Mall won\'t miss it.

[Alydar in California]

Bob,

  I forgot about this:

\"It still bugs me that the only Belmont I\'ve missed since \'89 was Julie\'s on Colonial Affair.\"

Damn. The Belmont to miss was 1998. Nothing of significance happened that year.

 \"Did you ever hear Julie\'s race call from Belmont Park?\"

No. Can you direct me to it? I showed you mine. You show me yours.

\"Racing needs Julie every bit as much as she apparently needs racing.\"

Well put, Bob.

[cheapclaimer]

While I still can\'t forgive his ride on Middlesex Drive in the BC Mile (early speed type on the hedge from the one hole, taken back, aarrrgh!) the come back of Shane Sellers has been a stupendous success down in Kaintukeee. He\'s always been better than Julie imho. BTW, Julie provided little in her on tv analysis, just short of a babbling idiot from what I recall.

Other big time sinners Pat Day former druggie/alky abuser before he found religion. It\'s amazing Earlie Fires has been able to win over 6000 races with his bouts with Demon Rum. Would\'ve ridden more big time horses had he been a tad bit more reliable, Chop Chop Chavez a rank amateur with the whip compared to Earlie. Mark Guidry disappeared some years ago from the Chicago circuit with a cocaine problem.

Whichever drug one gets hooked on, it\'s tough to defeat. Those that come out on top are always in danger of returning to the quagmire. Kudos to those that can.