Jockey Shane Sellers reinforced Tuesday what he'd said in early October -- he's finished riding horses.
Sellers, 38, could have many big riding days ahead, but he doesn't want to risk serious injury without better insurance coverage, an issue that has disrupted horse racing since many jockeys learned, belatedly, that the Jockeys' Guild had dropped its $1-million group-accident policy in 2002.
"I can't afford to wind up like Gary Birzer," said Sellers, winner of more than 4,000 races.
Birzer, paralyzed from the chest down after a spill at Mountaineer Park in West Virginia in July, has incurred medical expenses of more than $600,000 and faces a long rehabilitation period. Birzer was not aware that the guild's policy had lapsed.
Sellers has denied being the ringleader of a jockeys' boycott at Churchill Downs last month. Led away in handcuffs by track security, Sellers was banned from Churchill a few days before the boycott began. He has dropped an unfair labor charge that he filed against Churchill with the National Labor Relations Board.
Sellers says he remains a strong supporter of the guild.
Having attended the annual meeting earlier this month last week near Dallas, Sellers said, "I know that [the guild] will win the war over insurance. Unfortunately, that won't happen overnight. The old guild management set us back 25 years. To win the war, we're going to lose some soldiers, and I choose not to be one. I'm not going to risk losing my kids' future for a $45 jock's mount fee."
No longer a member of the guild is Eddie King, once the group's treasurer, who was ousted at the annual meeting. Eddie and Penny King, his wife, flew from New Jersey to Texas for the meeting, but after arriving, King was told that he had been voted out. King, a guild member for about 25 years, sued the organization in November in an effort to learn more about the guild's financial dealings.
"We didn't go there with the idea to cause any trouble," Penny King said. "We had planned to just sit there and take notes about what was going on."
King's suit, which among other things seeks information about the transfer of $1 million from one guild account to another, was filed by his attorney, Alan Milstein.
"This [King's ouster] was obviously in retaliation for filing the lawsuit," Milstein said. "It's a violation of the federal labor laws that protect union members."
