Nakatani Suspended Five Days, Fined $500 in Whipping Case

Corey Nakatani, one of the leading jockeys in the country, was suspended for five days and fined $500 by Santa Anita stewards Friday in what is far from the last chapter in a horse- whipping episode at the track last month.

Reacting to the stewards’ ruling, one of Nakatani’s attorneys, Darrell Vienna, said he will seek a stay from the California Horse Racing Board that would enable Nakatani to keep riding while the suspension is appealed. Vienna said Nakatani, who admitted to no wrong-doing during a stewards’ hearing into the matter last weekend, would pay the fine.

Nakatani’s penalty is believed to be one of the stiffest given to a jockey in California for a whip violation. Usually, jockeys have been fined and not suspended for similar offenses, but the racing board introduced a get-tough policy in this area last year.

Tillie’s Joy, a maiden who finished sixth while running for a $32,000 claiming price, was struck several times by Nakatani after the colt crossed the finish line. In returning to the unsaddling area, Tillie’s Joy suffered multiple fractures of his left foreleg, broke down and was destroyed. Nakatani testified at the hearing that he was trying to school Tillie’s Joy and keep him running in a straight line as he galloped out.

“I’m upset by the five days,” said Charles Ottaviano, who owned Tillie’s Joy. “I thought the penalty could have been stiffer.”

Ottaviano’s attorney, Andy Birgel Jr., said that he is still investigating the incident.

“This horse was run into the ground,” Birgel said. “Now we need to determine if there is cause to go ahead with a lawsuit.”

The stewards--Ingrid Fermin, Pete Pedersen and Tom Ward--said that they did not link Nakatani’s whipping to the horse’s death.

“The weight of the evidence,” their statement said, “does not establish that Mr. Nakatani’s use of the whip was the cause of catastrophic injury. . . .”

Birgel said he didn’t know why the stewards even mentioned the death of Tillie’s Joy.

“That was not the issue,” Birgel said. “There was no allegation in the state’s complaint about that.”

The stewards also said that “evidence presented during the hearing showed that Mr. Nakatani used his whip on a horse after the horse had achieved its maximum placing in the race, which is in violation of rule No. 1688. The weight of the evidence does not support the argument that Mr. Nakatani used the whip in accordance with rule No. 1688 to help the horse maintain a straight course.”

Nakatani, who was No. 2 behind Jerry Bailey with purses of $14.9 million last year and who leads the list this year, is scheduled to start his suspension Thursday. Minus an appeal, he would also be suspended next Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and Feb. 7.

“We’re disappointed at the ruling,” Vienna said. “The evidence didn’t bear out the finding by the stewards. I don’t see how they could come to the conclusion they did. The way they are interpreting the rule, jockeys wouldn’t be able to use their whips during morning workouts. I think the stewards were under a lot of pressure and were put in a position where they were forced to exceed the severity of any penalty that had been given out before.”

One of the witnesses at the hearing, a pony rider who escorts horses before and after races, said that in her experience, jockeys whip horses after races every day.

Racing board investigators confiscated more than a dozen illegal whips during a search of the jockeys’ room at Fairplex Park in Pomona in September.

”. . . An unacceptable number of [whip] violations continue to occur,” the board said in a policy statement issued in November. “California has the most protective whip regulations in the country. . . . [Racing officials] at all racetracks in California have been ordered to increase their vigilance in this matter.”

Vienna’s first course of appeal is with the racing board, and then he might refer the matter to the courts.

“We’ll go that far if we have to,” he said. “I’m not confident that we’ll get a fair hearing as long as the issue is in the grasp of the racing board.”