Stevens Won’t Ride at Lone Star

Gary Stevens, the Hall of Fame jockey who has won eight Breeders’ Cup races, said Thursday he wouldn’t be riding in the Cup races at Lone Star Park on Oct. 30 because of insurance considerations.

Stevens said that Lone Star officials, aware of his planned boycott of the Breeders’ Cup, offered to provide $500,000 worth of accident insurance, but that wasn’t enough to persuade him to ride.

Corey Johnsen, president of Lone Star, said that he told Stevens there was a possibility of increasing the coverage from the existing $100,000 to $500,000.

A Breeders’ Cup spokesman said that negotiations were ongoing with an insurance company. One of the issues is whether jockeys would be insured for Lone Star races other than the eight Breeders’ Cup stakes. Lone Star has scheduled a three-race International Jockey Championship on Thursday, there are three stakes a week from today and four non-Breeders’ Cup stakes Oct. 30.

Stevens said that he wasn’t aware that the Jockeys’ Guild’s catastrophic insurance plan had lapsed until recently. Stevens suffered a collapsed lung after his mount, Storming Home, dumped him in the Arlington Million last year at Arlington Park in suburban Chicago. He was sidelined for three weeks.