Posted on 04/10/2014 6:04:09 PM PDT by ConservativeStatement
A jury yesterday awarded nearly $7.8 million to the family of a jockey killed at Parx Racing after a race horse - spooked by roaming chickens - threw, dragged and kicked him.
Mario Calderon, 55, of Croydon, Bucks County, died after suffering 11 broken ribs and a bleed on his brain in the May 2010 mishap at the racetrack formerly known as Philadelphia Park, according to his attorney Michael A. Trunk.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Free Range Chickins kill jockey?
Here is an article from 2010 (a horse racing site):
Philadelphia Park horsemen and stable employees are mourning the loss of veteran exercise rider Mario Calderon, who died from injuries suffered during a training accident at the Pennsylvania racetrack on Sunday morning. Calderon, who also maintained a jockeys license though he rode infrequently, turned 55 years old on Saturday.
According to sources, a horse Calderon was aboard at approximately 6:30 a.m. took a bad step or was spooked approaching the seven-eighths pole. The rider lost his balance, got his foot hung up in the stirrups, and was dragged nearly a quarter of a mile. He suffered severe head and chest injuries after being kicked while the horse continued to run. An ambulance was called immediately, Calderon was taken to a nearby hospital for surgery, but he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
Calderon had been employed by trainer Pam Shavelson for a number of years and was well known in the Philadelphia Park backstretch community.
http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/exercise-rider-dies-at-philadelphia-park/
This is the first time I have ever heard of a track being held liable for a jockeys death. On average, two jockeys are killed every year in the U.S., and many more are paralyzed or severely injured. It MAY be the case that the track did nothing about these “roaming chickens”, and that’s why they lost the case. However, many tracks have an infield pond which attracts Geese and other birds. Who knows what this jury was thinking.
Stick it to the rich corporation!
Well now their bed has been feathered for life...
That's a problem. The ski industry started to address that issue in the 60's.
Oh, I’m sure, along with sob stories about the dead jockeys family in Latin America....
Most tracks ban dogs because of their desire to bark at, and chase, horses. There’s really no end to things that will spook a horse. Dogs, birds, cats, dead leaves, lawnmowers.
I've learned to drag my dog well off the trail when near the presence of horses on parkland trails that allow horses.
Chickens come home to roost?
He was just beginning to turn his life around...
Thunder.
Taking my dogs to the gun range (and leaving them in the vehicle parked a ways from the firing line) has made them immune to concern over thunder.
Sticks, rocks....
That's a problem. The ski industry started to address that issue in the 60's.
The horse industry addressed it many years ago with types of stirrup irons that will break open with lateral pressure, like a ski binding, and leathers that pull away from the stirrup bar. One is also supposed to wear boots with a little heel and choose irons that are a touch too small to let the boot slip through. But at the track these precautions are often eliminated in the name of speed and weight. Jocks wear flat boots to race in (don't know why this man didn't have boots that wouldn't slip through the iron). They never use breakaway irons which are considered the province of kids and amateur ladies. The latch on the stirrup bar is up lest the leather slip off the bar at speed.
Horses are not at all unintelligent. Especially not racehorses--Thoroughbreds are very smart. But they are prey animals and they have a different visual system than humans and canids do. As a result, we often don't understand their reactions and tend to ascribe them to stupidity rather than prudence.
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