Horse Treats

By, Meredith Rogers

Although horse racing is not what we do, here are some interesting stories from the track. in honor of the Kentucky Derby this month

A jockey-less horse won the Gulfstream Park Handicap in 2013. The horse, Fort Larned, stumbled at the start of the race and lost his jockey, Brian Hernandez Jr., who was unharmed. The horse kept going and ended up winning the race by 15 lengths. Unfortunately, without a jockey, he couldn’t be called the winner. He entered the breeding shed in 2014 and is still siring foals today.

A jockey named Frank Hayes won his first race at the age of 22 years old on June 4, 1923 at Belmont Park. The problem was that it was also his last race. Unfortunately, Mr. Hayes suffered a fatal heart attack towards the end of the race. The horse he was on, Sweet Kiss, continued running and won by a head. She had been a 20-1 long-shot. This was the first, and presumably only time a jockey won a race posthumously. Mr. Hayes had been a stablehand and it was thought that the heart attack was brought on by the rapid weight loss he endured to be able to race: from 142 lbs to 130 lbs in ~24 hours. He was buried in his racing silks 3 days later and the horse never raced again because no jockey would touch her, especially since her new nickname was “Sweet Kiss of Death”.

An Irish racehorse was kidnapped and held for ransom. On a foggy evening of 1983, a coordinated attack was made on the horse’s groom’s family. James Fitzgerald, the groom, was forced to show the thieves where the horse, Shergar, was being stabled and help them load him into a horse box (trailer). After taking the horse, the robbers demanded ransom from the owners, who refused to pay in case it spurred further kidnappings. Unfortunately, despite the police’s best efforts, including hiring a clairvoyant, the fate of Shergar was never known. It has been proposed that Shergar was stolen by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) special operations team.

The slowest time for a race win was recorded by Never Mind II. In 1945, Never Mind II refused a fence in a steeplechase, was taken out of the race by his jockey, and brought back to the paddock. However, every other horse either fell or was disqualified, so his jockey mounted back up and completed the race at his leisure. He finished the 2-mile race in 11 minutes and 28 seconds.

In another steeplechase in 1953, a horse named Royal Student crashed followed right on his heels by another horse named Knother, who was being ridden by Mick Morrissey. Mr. Morrissey was thrown into the air and landed on Royal Student’s saddle and continued the race since Royal Student was getting up at the time and took off after the field Thus, Mr. Morrissey started the race on one horse and finished on another.

How many wins do you think the top jockey has? Well, Russell A. Baze has raced 53,578 times, winning 12,842 races, coming in second 9,600 times, coming in third 7,855 times, and earning a total of $199,334,219. He was born in 1958, and his father was also a jockey and trainer. His first race was in 1974 in Walla Walla, Washington, and his last in 2016. He is the only jockey to have won more than 400 races per year more than 3 times. He was inducted into the US Racing Hall of Fame in 2002. He’s still alive today.

News from Outside the Ring

Science time

Taking a horse’s temperature is never fun, even when they are fine with it. What if there was a way other than the ubiquitous rectal thermometer? Well, there isn’t, at least not according to a new study. Researchers compared the accuracy of body temperature readings in healthy horses between the traditional rectal thermometer and a noncontact infrared thermometer. Although the infrared thermometer gave consistent results to itself, it did not provide the correct temperature compared with the rectal thermometer. For more information, check out the article: Easterwood L, Cohen ND. Agreement of Temperatures Measured Using a Non-Contact Infrared Thermometer With a Rectal Digital Thermometer in Horses. J Equine Vet Sci. 2023;123:104243.

More science

We all know our own horse loves us more than any other human, but how do they know it’s us? New research has shown that horses can tell the difference between women’s and men’s voices and faces. The study had horses look at videos of women and men while they played the voices of women and men. When a woman’s voice was played they looked more at the video of the woman and when a man’s voice was played they looked more at the video of the man. This is only part of the story and more research is needed to understand how horse’s perceive humans compared to other critters and how they perceive their own human compared to other humans. For more information, check out the article: Gouyet C, Ringhofer M, Yamamoto S, Jardat P, Parias C, Reigner F, Calandreau L, Lansade L. Horses cross-modally recognize women and men. Sci Rep. 2023;13(1):3864.