A dangerous game

Racing needs to find a way to help jockeys

Jockeys live a hard life that can produce great rewards. In order to practice their trade, which demands as much skill and bravery as any act in sports, they have to pare their bodies down to assigned weights that are invariably less than even a very small human being would normally carry around. They will go to great lengths to achieve these goals.

For a long time, the life of the jockey has been lived behind closed doors, kept within the tight boundaries of a closed society. In the last couple of years this has changed. In her bestselling book chronicling the career of Seabiscuit, author Laura Hillenbrand devoted chunks of text to the obscene battles jockeys must fight to keep their weight down. Mainstream media both preceded and followed Hillenbrand, writing about the widespread bulimia and drastic dieting among jockeys. Last month HBO's Real Sports did a short segment focusing almost entirely on "flipping," or bulimia, and took cameras into a jocks' quarters to show viewers the special "flipping bowl," a toilet without a seat.

(On a personal note: In the 1980s I was covering horse racing in upstate New York, and one afternoon at Saratoga I sat outside the jocks' room awaiting an assigned interview. Through a screen door, I watched a slender young jockey eat, in order, a cheeseburger, a bowl of soup and a huge ice cream sundae during the day's racing card. I wondered then where the food would go, although even to my na•ve eyes, it was obvious).

Flipping, pill-popping and crash dieting are, of course, doubly dangerous because jockeys must pilot powerful animals weighing more than 1,000 pounds, while racing other small men doing the same thing. It is chilling work rendered antiseptic because we bet on the races and because they make it look easy.

We hear more about flipping and dieting these days because many jockeys and ex-jockeys have gone public as part of a crusade to increase weight restrictions by five pounds, thus giving jocks a cushion and diminishing the pressure to drop drastically. Most vocal has been ex-rider Randy Romero, who is battling life-threatening liver and kidney ailments from his days of flipping.

Anyone who has walked around the inside of the jocks' room at any track and seen the taut, emaciated bodies of jockeys knows that their work is unnaturally demanding. But some suggest that raising the scale will not help. First, it's more weight on a horse's back, supported by brittle legs. Second, it just opens the sport to heavier athletes. No matter what the scale of weights, there will be men and women, slightly too heavy, trying to slip in by whatever means available. Now we have 130-pound athletes cutting to 112; later we could have 140-pounders cutting to 117. It's an endless story. Wrestlers have been doing this for years, learning their natural weight and then participating in a division 20 pounds lower.

For jockeys, the answer might be more complex. Instead of fighting to raise the weight scale, perhaps the jocks should argue for racing commissions to hire full-time nutritionists and trainers. This way, jocks could learn how to properly maintain a steady weight, rather than fluctuating wildly. Several riders already are doing it successfully: Laffit Pincay Jr., Pat Day, Victor Espinoza. Those who flip and crash are living in a medieval world.

It is not a dramatic answer, and it would take time. But a generation down the road, the sport might find itself with stronger, healthier riders, no longer risking their own health.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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