04/25/24
March 15, 2005
"I don't think there's any other profession in the world whereby two ambulances are in attendance for everything you do.": Two jockeys died in separate race fatalities this past weekend, bringing the sport's death toll to 300 in Australia. Last night 23-year-old apprentice jockey Gavin Lisk died of head injuries he suffered in a fall at the Moe races on Monday. On Sunday, 25-year-old Adrian Ledger crashed to the turf when his horse, Daring Movement, fell over near the home turn at the Corowa races. Ledger, who was riding for his father, trainer John Ledger, was flown to Canberra hospital but did not recover consciousness. On Monday afternoon, his family decided to turn off his life support. Ledger's wife Amy is expecting their first child.
posted by the red terror to extreme at 10:43 AM - 7 comments
"Horse racing doesn't seem like a particularly dangerous sport compared to some others like rugby or cycling." You're joking, surely? Take a 126-lb guy, throw him headfirst into the ground from 6-feet at a rate of 30 mph, and then have 1200-lb animals stampede overtop. The injuries are horrific. There are still several broken necks in rugby per year, but rarely deaths. That's for worldwide rugby. There are far more rugby players in Australia than there are jockeys -- far, far, far more -- yet I would guess there aren't even 1/10th the number of rugby fatalities the past century in Oz than there have been for jockeys. I can't comment about cycling, I don't know. I think boxing and pole vaulting (seriously!) have greater incidents of death, but I believe the actual "sport" that statistically has the greatest number of annual deaths is...ready?... fishing.
posted by the red terror at 05:04 PM on March 15, 2005
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying horse racing is not a dangerous sport - of course it is. But horse racing is a pretty massive sport here in the UK, and although I don't follow it closely I don't recall hearing about that many serious injuries or deaths. I'm guessing the fitness levels of the jockeys, plus better safety equipment means that such things are thankfully getting rarer. I only mention cycling, because I follow that quite closely and it seems like every few months that a pro cyclist gets hit by a car or is involved in a fatal crash. Fishing doesn't really surprise me. Recreational fishing and angling is the biggest activity in the world, right? I bet more people fall off ladders and die whilst changing a lightbulb than die whilst taking part in a sport.
posted by afx237vi at 05:22 PM on March 15, 2005
Just did some quick googling...nothing definitive...but this intrigues: The Answer Bank is a British website, it lists angling as their No. 1 cause of death; followed by Equestrian events (like horse racing) and Motor Sports. They claim, "the highest number of injuries per capita are sustained by rugby players. Rugby players are three-times more likely to get injured playing their sport than someone taking part in martial arts." (I suspect these are Brit statistics. No word on fatalties.) A study conducted in 2000 by University of Texas and the American Medical Equestrian Association notes that the United States has a "licensed jockey population of approximately 2700 persons," and reports: "A total of 6545 injury events occurred during official races between 1993 and 1996 (606 per 1000 jockey years). Nearly 1 in 5 injuries (18.8%) was to the jockey's head or neck. Other frequent sites included the leg (15.5%). foot/ ankle (10.7%), back (10.7%), arm/hand (11.0%), and shoulder (9.6%). Most head injuries resulted from being thrown from the horse (41.8%) or struck by the horse's head (25.2%). Being thrown from the horse was the cause of 55.1% of back and 49.6% of chest injuries." The study conclusion: "Our data suggest that jockeys have a high injury rate." (The rest of that report gets into some other ghastly horse-related human fatalities.)
posted by the red terror at 05:22 PM on March 15, 2005
Those figures aren't surprising. Certainly ten years ago angling was by far the most popular participant sport in the UK and the calculations about angling at least don't appear to be per capita of participant.
posted by squealy at 06:35 PM on March 15, 2005
My understanding that the most dangerous sport (not injuries, but fatalities) going is golf. Lightening strikes and heart attacks. Not that jumping on the back of a gigantic, high-speed, possibly drugged horse isn't inherently dangerous, though.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 07:57 AM on March 16, 2005
You know, that opening quote bugs the shit out of me. Horse racing may be dangerous - and no doubt exacerbated by the jockeys' near complete lack of protective gear - but to claim there's no other profession with multiple ambulences in attendance? Has the guy never heard of motorsport or cycling, to name just two?
posted by rodgerd at 03:15 PM on March 17, 2005
This is very sad for the families of both jockeys but the figure of 300 deaths doesn't seem so shocking when you consider it's over a period of almost 160 years. The article also says that in some of the early years you'd get seven or eight deaths a year. Horse racing doesn't seem like a particularly dangerous sport compared to some others like rugby or cycling. I'd be interested to see some figures comparing different sports.