July 8th, 2012
Dear Readers,
First off, I want to thank all of you that showed
up at yesterdays Alameda County Fair to attend the Handicapping Seminar. As a
guest speaker, I was thrilled to see so many people show up for the event,
standing room only, in fact.
Located
right next to the saddling paddock, Dennis Miller and Frank Mirahmadi put on a
great show. Both gentlemen have a vast
amount of experience backing them up, making the seminar both interesting and
useful.
Frank
is the announcer and race caller for the Alameda, Ferndale, Fresno and Stockton
County Fairs, as well as the race caller at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas during
their racing season Frank is also a TVG on air personality.
Dennis
Miller is the editor of “Aces” a Northern California Golf Lifestyle magazine, great website, by the way. Dennis is also The Alameda County Fairs Horseracing Publicist, charged with promoting the
horseracing side of the Association.
To be greeted so warmly by so many fans of the
Shelley Riley – Casual Lies saga, was not only surprising, but refreshing, while the interest shown in acquiring
the memoir was heartening and encouraging. Duly incentivized, I was at my computer, typing away
early this morning, pushing to finish editing Chapter 14 after Tracy’s initial
comments had come back on the Chapter.
I don’t know how long it will take to get it
published, as you know, but I will keep everybody apprised as to my progress on
that front.
Finally I wanted to say a few words about the
tragic loss of Jorge Herrera. As you're aware, Jim Riley, my husband for well over
20 years was a jockey. As the wife of a jockey, my heart was in my throat throughout
every race he rode, and until he jumped off and unsaddled his mount.
The life of a jockey is a life filled with
danger, slightly more than a hundred pounds of man or woman, perched atop over a
thousand pounds of horse flesh, with a mind of its own. I needn’t dwell on recounting gory tales from
the past; we have all seen the accidents, spectacular and horrifying alike.
What I do know firsthand, is the feeling that sweeps over you as you see someone
go down in a race, the fear and the alarm. When it’s your loved one, the fear
escalates to near panic and the alarm becomes terror.
In the
early seventies, Jim was riding races at Charles Town Race Track and Shenandoah
Downs. Both tracks shared a parking lot and ran their meets one after another, in
Charles Town West Virginia. About as far
from the top tiers of racing as you could get, and Jim was riding a lot of
horses with very questionable underpinnings.
Racing under the lights, on a tight five to
six furlong oval, aboard hard used old campaigners, was audacious to say the
least. But we were poor and even a losing jock mount meant a lot to us at the
time.
One night, Jim had been scheduled to ride
several horses on the card and one old class horse in particular, stood out
from the rest.
This horse had once been a really good
racehorse, winning allowance and stakes races alike. Changing hands, via the
claiming box many times, his glory days were obviously long gone. This classy but
unfortunate warrior had been campaigned steadily, right down to the bottom of
the barrel, over a career spanning many years.
Named
on the horse at the draw, we didn’t know the trainer, he didn’t train a lot of
horses, but his stats were pretty good. So why didn’t anybody want to ride him?
Once the horses were in the saddling paddock, it became pretty obvious, this
old boy had seen his fair share of injuries over the years.
Swathed in running bandages, it was obvious,
unless they had packed the bandages with cotton to scare off a claim, this
horse had some pretty big ankles and his knees looked like a spiked dog collar.
I rushed over to the
Jocks room and waylaid Jim as he came out. Anxious and worried I told him the
horse had two big ankles, and his knees looked like deeply notched flywheels. He
laughed, and told me not to worry; those old broke down class horses stayed around,
because they knew how to take care of themselves. “He won’t run fast enough to
hurt himself, no matter how hard I ask him.” Was his parting comment, as he
walked over to the saddling paddock, to get on his mount.
I hurried over to
the rail to watch the horse warm up, praying they would scratch him in the post
parade. No such luck for me, he traveled like a new car on a four lane freeway. As the race was being run and as they approached
the turn, three horses went down, bam, one after another. It looked like the
whole field might go down. Only four horses avoided the melee, by going
practically to the outside fence, avoiding the downed riders and their mounts.
I stood gripping the rail with all the strength in my one hand, while the other
covered my mouth. I whispered behind my hand, please get up, please get up…….
I was so focused on the wreck; I failed to see
Jim and his wily old campaigner pass under the wire for the win.
On the way home, I
was talking about the horse and how bad his legs looked, I felt we had gotten
twice lucky. One, he’d won the race and two he didn’t break down or get caught
up in the accident. At which point Jim
laughed at me, and told me to stop worrying, he’d ridden a lot of horses who
were a lot worse than him.
But you don’t stop
worrying, that’s just the point, they love what they’re doing, and part of why
you love them is because of their passion for their chosen sport. After that
night, I made Jim promise me that if he went down, even if he had a broken leg,
he needed to get up and lean on the rail so I could see he was alive.
Jorge Herrera left
this world with his boots on and his whip in his hand, doing what he loved to
do. My heart goes out to the family left to mourn his passing. Jorge was way too
young to start his next adventure, wherever that may be.
Take care, each and every one of you,
Shelley Riley
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