THOROUGHBRED RACING : Piggott Faced Difficult Decision

Years ago, baseball writers who traveled with the New York teams were as entertaining as the clubs themselves. They would blow into a town, amusing one another with nonstop one-liners, flicking ashes on rugs in hotel lobbies and taking the time to file an occasional story. The late Jimmy Cannon, who was one of their own, referred to this mob as “The Chipmunks.”

New York baseball writers don’t behave that way now, perhaps because the days of a rival newspaper on every block are no more and their numbers have thinned considerably.

In London, though, the British still read enough newspapers to keep a lot of publishers in business, and Fleet Street reporters will pop up at an American sports event and command attention the way the New Yorkers used to. There’s even a London turf writer who travels in a signature deerstalker cap, asks outlandish questions and gushes opinions as bizarre as his headdress. He didn’t attend the recent Breeders’ Cup races at Gulfstream Park, but the British press still left their Yankee counterparts with some vivid memories.

After Lester Piggott was seriously injured in a spill that killed a horse in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, the British turf writers descended on the legendary jockey’s hospital for that prized interview, even though they had been advised by the medical staff to stay away.

Halloween had already passed, but the imaginative London reporters were still very much in disguise. One of them came as a priest, another as an X-ray technician. They were turned away. A doubly ambitious reporter dressed up as a doctor, stethoscope included, and after being barred from Piggott’s room, went to a pay phone outside the hospital and unsuccessfully tried to talk his way in as a florist with a delivery.

As it turned out, these impostors were finally called back to England, and when Piggott emerged from intensive care he had little to say, which has been a career trait.

Besides questions about his injuries, which apparently will not prevent Piggott, 57, from riding again, there was a need to know why Mr Brooks, the horse that broke down and was destroyed, wasn’t scratched. During the post parade, Piggott had said to another English jockey, Walter Swinburn, that Mr Brooks didn’t have a good warm-up.

“Lester never says very much,” Swinburn said. “But when he does say something, you listen.”

There were others at Gulfstream who questioned Mr Brooks’ condition. Bruce Jackson, who saddled Superstrike, a California starter in the Sprint, stood in the walking ring with his jockey, Danny Sorenson.

“Look at this horse,” Jackson said as Mr Brooks passed by. “He’s dead lame.”

Sorenson looked at Mr Brooks and said: “I’d never ride a horse who’s walking like that.”

The morning after the Sprint, Jackson recalled the conversation. “You know when Sorenson says something like that about a horse, he means it,” Jackson said. “Because Danny’ll usually ride just about any horse you throw him on.”

Mr Brooks delayed the start, refusing to enter the gate. Should Piggott have asked the track-side veterinarian to take an extra look at his mount, risking a scratch in a $1-million race?

The Humane Society of the United States, which had been patrolling Gulfstream the weekend of the Breeders’ Cup, would give an immediate affirmative to that question, but getting off a horse seconds before a race is one of the toughest decisions jockeys face, and seldom do they exercise the option.

Chris McCarron did, a few years ago on a filly running in a stake for trainer Charlie Whittingham. The horse was scratched and Whittingham was chagrined. Explaining to an owner why his horse can’t run in an important race is one of the toughest things a trainer must do.

Horse Racing Notes

Brought To Mind, at 120 pounds, is the highweight Sunday in the $100,000 Silver Belles Handicap for fillies and mares at Hollywood Park. Others entered in the 1 1/16-mile stake are Cargo, Re Toss, Love Avie, Terre Haute, Race the Wild Wind, Sacramentada and Interactive. . . . The on-track attendance has been less than 6,700 the last two days at Hollywood, which opened Wednesday with a crowd of 12,042. . . . A shocker Thursday was Prince Reykjavik, who won the fourth race and paid $135.20.