Jockey mount-fee negotiations make progress but Thursday card won't be pretty
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A handful of riders unaffiliated with The Jockeys’ Guild have begun accepting mounts at Remington Park in Oklahoma, allowing the track to plan on holding a scratch-marred nine-race card Thursday night despite the lack of an agreement between the Guild and local horsemen on mount fees.
Five riders have been named on horses throughout the card, with field sizes ranging from five to two horses. More than half the horses originally entered for the card have been scratched.
Members of The Jockeys’ Guild have been boycotting races at Remington as a result of an ongoing dispute over mount fees. Representatives of the Guild and an association representing the track’s trainers and owners continued to exchange proposals on Wednesday, and late in the day, a representative of the Thoroughbred Racing Association of Oklahoma, the horsemen’s group, called one of the exchanges an “agreement.”
Joe Lucas, a consultant for the TRAO, said that the Guild accepted the terms of the organization’s latest proposal as part of the exchange.
“It’s all done,” Lucas said.
However, Terry Meyocks, the chief executive of the guild, cautioned that the latest exchange did not represent a completed deal. He said that riders would not commit to mounts at the track until the full TRAO board approved the agreement and the Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission ratified the deal, which could be as early as tomorrow.
If the agreement holds and is approved, the Thursday and Friday cards would still go ahead with only the horses that were not scratched. Lucas said that trainers may have some options to change the named riders on Thursday and Friday morning.
The nine-race Friday night card has nine different substitute riders appearing on the entry sheet. Remington has an eight-race card scheduled for Saturday night, but riders have not yet been required to be named on their mounts for the Saturday card.
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