Tension Mounting Over Guild Fight

The Jockeys’ Guild, an organization of race riders that was cobbled together by Eddie Arcaro, John Longden and others in 1940, held a coast-to-coast celebration in honor of its 60th anniversary last summer. There was a big cake at Churchill Downs, and at 24 other tracks from New York to California there were moments of silence for the 141 jockeys who had lost their lives in riding accidents.

This summer, the Jockeys’ Guild is showing that the next 60 years may be the hardest. In mid-June, less than 24 hours after an emotional teleconference involving the group’s nine-member executive committee, John Giovanni, national manager of the guild since 1987, was locked out of his office and his staff of five was also let go. The guild’s six regional managers were discharged (two were later rehired) and Pat Day, a Hall of Fame rider, resigned as president and dropped his membership. In a sport in which the competition at the highest levels is already razor-sharp, some of the game’s premier jockeys find themselves on opposite sides in the guild brouhaha. Whether their differences carry over to the track remains to be seen.

An embittered Jerry Bailey, another Hall of Famer and a former guild president, has resigned from the executive committee, and Chris McCarron, one of only seven riders with more than 7,000 winners, is at the forefront of the faction that ousted Giovanni.

In the early days of the Jockeys’ Guild, malfeasance almost carried the organization into bankruptcy. Three years after the guild’s beginning, there was $36 in the bank and the bills totaled $2,400. No one has suggested that the Giovanni regime was tainted, but balancing the books became more difficult by the year, and this year the cupboard was virtually bare when the guild’s insurance carrier--which supplies the jockeys and their families with health insurance--socked the membership with a 43% premium increase. In April, the health-insurance policy was allowed to lapse and now Giovanni’s interim replacements are scrambling to sign up guild members for a federal safety net that will temporarily extend their health insurance.

“We knew there was going to be a premium increase, but this blindsided us,” Giovanni said. “This was the least palatable of any scenario.”

For years, the Jockeys’ Guild, composed of a membership whose high-risk occupation is considered more dangerous than automobile racing and even mountain-climbing, has been insurance-poor. Since 1966, racetracks that belong to the Thoroughbred Racing Assns. have funded basic medical accident coverage for jockeys--coverage that is still in place--and have also paid substantially to defray the costs of additional insurance. But Giovanni, like a latter-day Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, had an annual shortfall of $800,000 as far back as the mid-1990s, and more recently he was still unsuccessfully playing catch-up. Just before the ax fell, he thought he might be able to add about $800,000 to the guild coffers from the state of California, but he ran out of time.

Besides paying for $100,000 in accident coverage, the TRA tracks also supplement the guild’s insurance fund by paying, on a sliding scale depending on the size of the track, between $6.88 and $3.30 for every horse a jockey rides. All jockeys are covered by the $100,000 accident policy; guild members have an additional $1 million worth of accident coverage.

“Running the guild is a tough deal,” said Chris Scherf, who as executive vice president of the TRA biennially negotiates insurance coverage with the jockeys’ group. “Dues go up because of insurance, and then the jocks ask if they’re getting full value for their membership. The only tangible thing the guild has is the insurance. All the other things are intangibles, and they’re tough to sell.”

In June, there was an announcement out of Lexington, Ky., where the guild’s offices are located, that Giovanni, a 56-year-old former rider, had retired.

“I didn’t retire,” Giovanni said. “I didn’t resign. I was the victim of a hostile takeover.”

Giovanni said that he couldn’t say more, on the advice of his attorneys. He reportedly had 1 1/2 years left on his contract.

“He was the most dedicated guy the guild’s ever had,” said Chick Lang, a guild consultant who used to run Pimlico Race Course and before that booked mounts for Bill Hartack. “You’d see him filled up to here with the flu and still get on a plane to go to some important meeting. Safety vests, safety rails, improved helmets, jockey-room conditions--he had a hand in all of that. He worked his butt off.”

John Reagan, senior management auditor for the California Horse Racing Board, confirmed that the state was going to be sending big bucks the guild’s way.

“Last year,” Reagan said, “we paid a Jockeys’ Guild trust $591,460 out of the uncashed-tickets money. But we didn’t make that payment until July. This year, that amount will increase, a bump of maybe 15%, but when it will be paid is hard to say.”

California jockeys enjoy better benefits than those in most states because they are covered by workman’s compensation here. A catastrophic injury on the track, which results in permanent disability, can result in a lump-sum payment of more than $1 million.

Day and McCarron have said little about their differences. Bailey, originally suspicious about the McCarron-recommended Matrix Capital Associates, which is running the guild office on an interim basis, figures he has said enough.

“I’m tired of talking about it,” Bailey said from Saratoga, where he has been the leading rider six times. “I don’t know what’s happening. I wasn’t in the loop when I was on the board, and I’m sure not in the loop now.”

You call the guild offices in Kentucky and Thomas Brondum answers the phone. Brondum works for Matrix, a consulting firm headed by Wayne Gertmenian, a highly credentialed economics professor at Pepperdine. Gertmenian, 61, worked for the Nixon and Ford administrations and was the chief detente negotiator with the Russians in the 1970s. Preferring to be called “Dr. G,” Gertmenian has known McCarron for about 10 years, a friendship that began when their children overlapped in school.

“I don’t have the time to deal with the press,” Brondum said. “The last time I talked to them, Giovanni’s lawyers got very upset, so I’m not going to be saying anything.”

Gertmenian, just back Thursday from a business trip to Moscow, was more forthcoming.

“I wouldn’t be involved if it weren’t for my friendship with Chris,” he said. “Two or three weeks into this, it became very clear to me how unappreciated jockeys are. They’ve got no pension plan, they’ve had this ongoing insurance struggle and they’ve generally been left behind in this world, despite the very dangerous things they do every day of their lives.”

Gertmenian said that of 12 colleagues who are working on a rotating basis at the Jockeys’ Guild offices, only one is being paid.

“We’re trying to get the ship in the right direction,” he said. “This is not about money, it’s about a moral high ground. It’s about trying to do the right thing. Before we came in, nobody had done anything wrong. There were a lot of things that just happened.”

Some prominent jockeys are not guild members, including Russell Baze, Northern California’s preeminent rider. Although the guild numbers only 700 members out of 2,500 or so licensed riders in the U.S., many of the non-guild jockeys ride sparingly. It has been said that in a typical year guild members ride 80% of the horses. Gertmenian said that on a national basis, 50 jockeys account for 50% of the purse money that horses earn. Jockeys usually earn 10% of what a horse earns.

One of the regional managers to be rehired by the guild was Darrell Haire, a former jockey who is based in California. Haire has been a manager for a year and a half.

“A lot of good things are going to come out of this,” Haire said. “This is a change for the good. Chris doesn’t need this. He’s financially secure and is doing what he’s doing because he wants to help the other jocks. I’m motivated by what has happened. The guild’s going to be moving forward. It’s a big challenge, but I think the new guys are ready.”

Lang, who ran Pimlico when a young McCarron was setting riding records, is disappointed that McCarron didn’t call him to discuss the issues.

“Chris used to be like a son to me,” Lang said. “Pat Day is embarrassed by what’s gone on.”

McCarron’s agent, Scott McClellan, said Thursday from Del Mar that McCarron was “worn out” from talking about guild issues.

Lang said that the executive committee’s vote to bring in Gertmenian was 5-4. Besides McCarron, another rider who favored the change was Tomey Jean Swan, a quarter horse jockey, who is acting guild president until an election is held in August.

“You can call this a coup, you could call it a purge, but whatever you call it, it was wrong,” Lang said.

He said that Giovanni, before the locks were changed, was given 45 minutes to list the things he wanted boxed and removed from his office. Another story Lang tells is about an office staffer, a single mother, who was not allowed to remove a picture of her children from her desk.

“When I first heard what happened,” Lang said, “I was disappointed. Then a little later I was dejected. Now I’m furious.”