I Just Aged Five Years

[Lily Wilkins]

... From watching the Haskell. What a *show!!
I am so glad Midnight Bourbon seems to be fine, and I hope Paco Lopez is okay.

[Carole Hanson]

Saw a tweet that Paco Lopez is ok. Apparently he got kicked in the knee by Midnight Bourbon as they went down and then Paco couldn’t feel his leg for 10 minutes, but now he is ok and will rest up today but return to racing tomorrow.

[Lily Wilkins]

Saw a tweet that Paco Lopez is ok. Apparently he got kicked in the knee by Midnight Bourbon as they went down and then Paco couldn’t feel his leg for 10 minutes, but now he is ok and will rest up today but return to racing tomorrow.

That is wonderful news, thank you!

[Cleo Patra]

Wow. A lot of people on the socials have been mentioning the whip ban as a factor but that’s absolutely not the case here. As a jockey myself, that’s straight up careless riding and if it happened here we would get a minimum 1 month riding ban (possibly more, because jockeys at this level should freakin know better). He changed 3 lanes without bothering to look or straighten. Stewards here will crucify you for interfering while changing one lane (but we do race a lot tighter). Owes Paco Lopez a HUGE apology.

That said, we all have brain fades and white line fever at some point in our careers and I’m sure that apology was offered. It looked to me like he had no idea he’d even caused it until they were returning to scale. I once had a green horse cannon straight into three other horses a quarter furlong from the line and nearly bring everybody down (lucky the only injuries were sore throats from screaming). Correcting him cost us the race (he ran 2nd beaten a nose) but it kept my fellow horses and riders safe. I still felt the most sick I’ve ever felt in 7 years of riding. It’s certainly a lesson that sticks, whether you actually bring a fellow rider down or whether it was just sheer luck that you didn’t.