THOROUGHBRED RACING : Don’t Expect to See Breakage Used to Settle Jockeys’ Contract

Breakage? Until a couple of weeks ago, Gary Stevens thought that was what happened when a jockey went down in a spill and was crushed by the horse.

“I’ve been in racing most of my life,” said Stevens, who was grooming horses as an 8-year-old in 1971. “But until I went to that meeting at Hollywood Park, this breakage stuff was something I’d never heard of.”

That meeting was in late November, another in a series between the Jockeys’ Guild and the Thoroughbred Racing Assns., who are at loggerheads over a new contract for the riders’ health and accident insurance. They are rushing toward a deadline on Dec. 31, when the current three-year deal expires.

Many ways to raise the millions of dollars in premiums have been suggested, none acceptable to both sides. The jockeys suggested a tax on the handle, holding out a penny for every $10 bet. The TRA, which represents about 40 tracks, including most of the biggest, has proposed that each track, based on its size, pay a fee per racing day into the insurance fund.

Joe Hirsch, Daily Racing Form columnist, thinks that if each track ran an extra race a year, turning over the proceeds to the jockeys’ insurance needs, most of the money could be raised.

Breakage has also been mentioned as a possible cash source. That is more than touching a nerve. Messing with the breakage fund would be tantamount to slashing an artery.

Breakage, which has been around for decades, is a cash cow for state and local governments, tracks and purse funds.

Starting as pennies and ending in the millions, breakage is the money that tracks withhold from bettors when payoffs don’t average out to an even dime. (It is a nickel in a few jurisdictions, including New York, which recently got off the dime). For example, with 10-cent breakage, if a horse is supposed to pay $5.88, the payoff will be rounded off to the lower dime, and the price will be $5.80. The extra eight cents goes into the breakage kitty.

It’s all very subtle and very legal and a windfall for those on the receiving end. New York, despite its change to five-cent breakage, still penalizes off-track players, who bet about two-thirds of the handle, with a 5% surcharge on payoffs. That gives the house double breakage, the advantage of keeping the odd pennies both on and off-track.

According to Racing Commissioners International, eight states allow state and/or local governments to share breakage. In 1992, the most recent year that data is available, governments in these states collected $11.4 million in breakage from betting on thoroughbreds. California hauled in $4.2 million of that amount. Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar totaled $2.1 million as their share of breakage, and another $7.3 million went to California purses.

All horseplayers do is put up the money. One argument against jockeys possibly using breakage for insurance premiums is that they are already tapping into purse money with the standard 10% commissions that they get for riding winners.

The California tracks’ share of 1992 breakage is slightly less than what the jockeys’ health and accident insurance cost nationally for 1993. The state’s share of 1992 breakage is more than 1 1/2 times what the jockeys’ national insurance cost.

Stevens might have been late to class for the lecture on breakage, but, as a jockey with more than 20,000 rides, he’s an expert on the need for insurance coverage.

“It’s not a question of whether you’re going to get hurt,” he said. “It’s a question of when .”

One of those whens for Stevens came in the fall of 1987, a week before the Breeders’ Cup at Hollywood Park. Riding at Santa Anita, Stevens suffered a broken ankle in a gate accident and missed the seven mounts he had on the $10-million card.

Stevens is a member of the Jockeys’ Guild’s board of directors. The guild, which has about 1,000 members, says that its riders ride about 90% of the horses. At the guild’s annual meeting in Las Vegas this week, John Giovanni, the jockeys’ national manager, was urged by his membership to continue hard-nosed negotiations with the tracks.

“I have a clear mandate,” he said. “The riders want no half-hearted solutions. They’re in a profession with the highest risks, and yet they have miserable benefits. This should be an embarrassment to the industry. We need new ideas from the TRA, and the tracks are advised to take our concerns seriously.”

If there’s no settlement by the end of the month, Giovanni said that his members won’t be riding. Tracks such as Santa Anita would be forced to use replacement jockeys in order to stay open.

“At least 90% of the riders (in Southern California) are guild members,” Stevens said. “Up North (at Bay Meadows), Russell Baze (400 victories in each of the last two years) and Tommy Chapman aren’t members. But Russell Baze and Tommy Chapman won’t be riding on Jan. 1 if we don’t have a contract. We’re together on this.”

Horse Racing Notes

Kent Desormeaux, battling flu for more than a week, took off his mounts at Hollywood Park Thursday. . . . Hollywood Park’s three stewards reviewed a race from Wednesday, in which Desormeaux’s mount was disqualified to second place, and held the jockey blameless. . . . Facing a five-day suspension from an infraction last week, Desormeaux obtained a court order that will allow him to continue riding, including his mount on Wekiva Springs in Saturday’s $100,000 Underwood Breeders’ Cup Stakes. . . . Gundaghia, winner of the race in 1992, is among the 10 entered in the six-furlong sprint. Cardmania, third in the Underwood twice and third in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint last month, is also expected to run. Others in the field are Minjinsky, Lost Pan, Demaloot Demashoot, Concept Win, Polar Route, Gotta Groove and Saratoga Gambler.

Pat Valenzuela has been winning races this week while riding much heavier than he did before his 20-day suspension. Valenzuela rode Wednesday at 121 pounds, unable to make the assigned weight on four mounts, and he was riding at 120 pounds Thursday. The heaviest local jockey in recent years has been Laffit Pincay, usually at 117 pounds. According to the rules, jockeys can’t ride a horse if they’re more than seven pounds over the assigned weight. . . . New York-based Eddie Maple, winner of more than 4,100 races, is the winner of the 1995 George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award.

John J. Mooney, a racing executive who once headed the Ontario Jockey Club, Arlington International and Laurel Race Course, died Saturday in Toronto after suffering a heart attack. Mooney, 70, was born in 1924, about four months after his father, J.D. Mooney, rode Black Gold to victory in the Kentucky Derby. Among the survivors is Mike Mooney, director of publicity at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita.