CNN) -- Tom de la Hunty took Dutch bobsledder Edwin van Calker to the Whistler Sliding Center track one last time Tuesday and asked his driver if he could do it.He wasn't asking him to win; he was asking him whether he could compete. The coach and his pilot walked the course, and de la Hunty told van Calker to think about it, giving him an hour to make a decision.Time offered no healing. Van Calker told his coach he just couldn't drive this track and so on Wednesday the four-man No. 1 sled from the Netherlands pulled out of the Olympics.Because their driver was terrified."I've never seen someone get to a major event and not compete because they're scared. You keep your inner fears to yourself and do it," de la Hunty told reporters at a news conference. "That's why it's such a popular sport in the military. It's that kind of macho sport. You go over the top together."Van Calker, ranked 11th on the World Cup four-man tour, crashed on his first run during two-man practice on Saturday. That and the memories of other crashes, including one that resulted in two teammates in the hospital, were too much for van Calker.He never felt comfortable on the track during the two-man competition when he and teammate Sybren Jansma finished 14th. He and the rest of the four-man team were absent from two training runs on Tuesday, as he struggled with what to do. It didn't help that eight sleds crashed on that first day of training.And so that night, he made the decision to give up. Straight Talk About Danger
(CHICAGO, IL – February 22, 2010)
Knowing that four feet were added to the already 18-foot high icy walls of the half pipe at the Vancouver Games so that Gold Medal winner Shaun White and other snowboarders could propel themselves upwards like rocket ships should have convinced me that Brian Williams was right that no athletes have more courage than Winter Olympians. But, it didn’t.
The NBC-TV Evening News anchor was moved by grief to deliver his paean to downhill skiers, snowboarders, skeleton and bobsled sliders, ski-crossers and aerialists following the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvilli in a practice run. Kumaritashvilli’s death was his sport’s first fatality since 1975.
In comparison, 150 jockeys have been killed in a thoroughbred horse race since 1940, 60 are permanently disabled and three have died from their injuries in the last three and a half years, according to Terry Meyocks, national manager of the Jockeys’ Guild. A jockey has to have nerves of titanium, and bones of steel, just to work everyday.
A racehorse can fall in practice, clip heels with another runner in a race, bolt unexpectedly on a turn, or rear in the starting gate. One can’t predict when an occurrence of dire consequence will transpire. And, perhaps the random nature of accidents associated with such unforeseen animal behavior enables a rider to carry on.
Nevertheless, occasional bad luck’s no excuse for not keeping a history or at least an accounting of events that cause people to die or be injured on the racetracks. The tragic death of the Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, a horse, brought about the formation of The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database. One would think that we’d want the same for our sport’s human participants.
“As an industry, we’ve got to work together to save lives and improve the safety of the sport,” said Meyocks, when I tried to learn more about the number of jockeys who have died or experienced career-ending injury as a result of an accident. The veteran horse racing industry executive credited Keeneland and Dr. Barry Schumer for taking a lead position in helping to develop jockey safety and mentioned a long list of other organizations and people that have contributed to their efforts. But he said also, that despite the work and generosity of many, no official database exists and that having one is imperative. “Everything takes time in this industry,” Meyocks admitted, seemingly frustrated.
In the meantime, apprentice Michael Straight, a graduate of Chris McCarron’s North American Racing Academy, is one person who can tell Meyocks and the Jockeys’ Guild friends what it’s like to stare death in the face while on horseback. Straight is spending time in a wheelchair now, the victim of a nasty spill at Arlington Park. The East Greenbush, NY native has fingers crossed that he’ll walk eventually, but a lifelong dream to live the life of a jockey seems no more than a dream for him now.
“Being a jockey, I knew there was a risk. But you have to be bigger than that,” Straight acknowledged in a telephone interview a few days ago. “Every time I got in the gear, I would think about where I was. I was thinking of everyone else in the race, hoping that I wouldn’t do something to hurt them,” he added. I couldn’t help but believe that in Straight the sport had lost someone special. He was polite, humble and grateful that he’d gotten as far as he did in his chosen field, and wasn’t bitter with the cards that the sport dealt him.
In recounting his intimidating first mount at jockey school, Straight said, “Lots of kids had to not go along with it because they were too scared. But I wanted to be a jockey since I was seven or eight, so I wasn’t afraid.” The jockey credited an upbringing in a supportive family and friendships with jockeys at nearby Saratoga Racecourse as key to his learning process. I can’t be certain, but in talking to him, he sounded as a person well-grounded in a deep faith in God, too.
Nevertheless, Straight admitted that it is “a bit reckless” to ride horses. He believes jockeys who aren’t willing to go for an advantage when presented in a race weren’t up to the task. He also admitted that his youth accommodated a beneficial impetuosity. “I’d handicap my races knowing that some older jockeys would ‘stay safer’ and then played it out as it goes. During the running of a race, you rely a lot on instinct,” he said. Straight was 24 when his accident occurred.
As for which sport is the testiest, does it really matter? There’s no denying that the Olympics have been souped up considerably with daring in the last 30 years. After a slump in the TV ratings in the late 1980s, the organizers of the Winter Games deliberately began staging high-risk Medal sports that would appeal to a younger audience. This year’s ratings, in turn, are fantastic, even better than American Idol. Considering how the Olympic athletes are flinging themselves down the slopes, reaching breakneck speeds in the chutes, sliding faster than oysters down throats and soaring four stories above the surface of the mountain, Williams was spot on to say that they were cut from a different cloth than the common Joe.
Yet, jockeys are extraordinary, too. “I definitely thought we are braver than the average guy,” Straight replied when I asked him if jockeys, like the Olympians, were unusual. “If you want to do it, you don’t think that you’re going to be hurt. You don’t care so much about injuries,” he said.
If there is a difference between Straight and White beside the obvious, then, it’s not age, gender, weight, height, and daring, but purpose. White and his colleague Olympians court danger to make millions off the public’s fascination with it, while jockeys, like Straight, live with danger merely to keep working, their acceptance of risk rarely noticed.For more from Vic Zast, go to Twitter.com/viczast and Facebook.com/viczast
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