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."