A WEIGHTY PROBLEM : Effort to Shed Pounds Produces Upsetting Side Effects for Riders

At the core of horse racing lies a self-imposed misery that racing’s owners and trainers do not want to see, fans are largely unaware of and most jockeys cannot escape.

It is represented by a sound better suited to back alleys and washrooms than to a sport known for its riches, beauty and power.

It is the sound of someone vomiting.

“The first day I went into the jocks’ room to ride, I was a 19-year-old kid, I didn’t know nothing,� remembers Vince Amato, 34, the clerk of scales at Arlington Park and the paddock judge at Hawthorne Race Course, both Chicago-area tracks.

“I was from the city of Chicago, and the race track was new to me. I walked in and I went to the bathroom, and I heard this (noise), and I ran out and I turned to the clerk of scales, ‘I think somebody’s sick in the bathroom.’ Well, everybody fell out, and they got a big joke out of it, and to this day I still don’t understand it.�

What Amato could not understand--and never could bring himself to use--is one of the methods jockeys use to reach or maintain their required weight.

Jockeys call it flipping, or heaving. Conventional society would label it sick, which, in fact, it is. The medical term for the disease is bulimia.

But jockeys live apart, in the cloistered community of American thoroughbred racing that demands they weigh no more than 110 to 115 pounds and doesn’t care how they do it. It just weighs them before and after each race to make sure that they do.

Some riders, such as New York journeyman Mike Venezia and 1986 Eclipse Award champion Pat Day, say they make weight naturally, eating pretty much what they want when they want.

But for most of the United States’ approximately 3,500 licensed riders, making weight is a constant battle, one they fight with every weapon available--from low-calorie diets to near-starvation, from sweating in rubber suits to chemically induced dehydration, from occasional vomiting to chronic bulimia.

They fast for a day or more at a time or subsist on one daily child-sized meal of fish or chicken and salad. They drain their bodies of vital fluids and electrolytes with laxatives and diuretics such as Lasix, a drug used to treat heart patients and horses diagnosed as bleeders.

They take diet pills, and in the years when amphetamine-loaded appetite suppressants were commonly prescribed, some of them got addicted.

They sweat for hours at a time in “hot boxes�--steam rooms, saunas or whirlpools heated to temperatures as high as 120 degrees, or they wrap themselves in layers of clothes and sit in heated cars or run for miles between their morning exercise rides and their afternoon races.

They teach their stomach muscles to reverse themselves so they can vomit their food and liquid. Should they find themselves unable to learn that skill, called flipping, they gag themselves by drinking vinegar or soap suds or by shoving fingers or paper towels down their throats.

Some become so starved for the taste of food that they become classic bulimics who gorge 10 to 15 pounds of food at a time before heading to the nearest “heaving bowl�--racing’s equivalent of the Roman vomitorium--to purge it.

“Every jocks’ room in the country has a heaving bowl; every jocks’ room in the country has a hot box,� says New York rider Richard Migliore.

In doing all these things, say eating disorder specialists, riders risk chronic depression, digestive disorders and loss of teeth. They also can suffer electrolyte imbalances that could lead to weakness and fainting spells, which in turn--if they occurred on-track--could cause serious injury or death.

Dr. Joseph Sawicki, physician for the New York Racing Assn., says he has tried so long and so unsuccessfully to warn riders of the risks that he has nearly given up.

“You can’t talk to them in the first place,� he said. “They’re going to interrupt you and do what they damn well please anyway.

“They go into the hot box, they lose between three and four pounds. They just flop down, and they can’t ride because their electrolytes are gone. . . . I try to tell them that one of these times they are going to get bad gastric hemorrhage from bulimia. . . . It’s a disgrace. That (bulimia) and the hot box is the worst part of it.

“It’s reached the point where I don’t care any more,� Sawicki added. “Let them do what they want. You can’t force them to do anything. They come in, they pass out, I’ve got to take them off (their scheduled mounts).�

Jockeys could be risking more than bad moods, stomach problems and lost teeth.

Specialists suspect--but cannot yet prove--that long-term eating disorders can lead to serious, perhaps life-threatening illnesses such as heart and vascular disease. Their study of eating disorders is a new one.

Preoccupation with weight, though, is nothing new in racing. Neither are the inherent risks.

Fred Archer, the great English jockey, depressed by the death of his wife, his weight problem and poor health stemming in part from his dieting and purging, shot and killed himself in 1886 at 29 while suffering from fever-induced delirium.

In 1896, Isaac Murphy, the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbies and the best percentage rider in history, died at 35. The official cause was pneumonia, but thoroughbred historian Bernard Livingston writes that Murphy really succumbed to “the rigors of a life-long battle to maintain the low weight required of his profession.�

The scale, established in the 19th Century by the Jockey Club, starts around 96 pounds and, theoretically, increases to infinity. But a horse is rarely assigned fewer than 104 pounds or more than 130, and most carry assigned weights of 110 to 122.

Most states will allow a jockey to go “overweight� by up to five pounds with the trainer’s permission. Some trainers grudgingly give it for proven jockeys.

But if a rider wants enough mounts to make a decent living, he must keep his weight, in tack, at no more than 113 to 115 pounds. Tack--a rider’s boots, silks, saddle and saddle pad--weighs three to four pounds, so most jockeys try to stay between 109 and 113 stripped.

There are no height requirements. One would expect a 5-foot man to have an easier time making the weight than one 5-7, but that is not always the case.

Isaac Murphy was only 5 feet but he was so muscular that he ballooned easily to 130 or 140 pounds in the winter off-seasons. Five-time Eclipse Award champion Laffit Pincay, 5-1, has dieted and reduced his entire career but must be content at 117 pounds, with tack.

New York jockeys George Martens, national champion apprentice in 1976, and Jose Santos, top money winner last year, jog to reduce. But sometimes they find it hard to work up enough sweat, especially in winter.

“I eat only one time a day, in the night,� says the 5-3 Santos, who usually weighs about 112 pounds. “The thirst kills me and I drink a lot of water. . . . Sometimes I flip. Not every day, but when I feel so heavy, sometimes I’ll flip.�

Santos, 26, sometimes uses the hot box and even less frequently takes Lasix.

Martens, 30, 5-5, has an even tougher regimen. His weight problems have prompted one premature retirement and two unscheduled leaves of absence.

“I basically try to eat just one meal, at night,� he says. “I go through the whole ordeal. I’ll heave every now and then. I’d say once a day at least. I’ll get on five or six horses in the morning, and then I’ll go home and run with a rubber suit.�

After three or four miles, he returns to the track to ride races, hopefully at 113 pounds, frequently at more.

Most dehydraters, however, rely on the hot box.

Among those are Jorge Velasquez, Jacinto Vasquez and Frank Lovato Jr.

“I use the hot box sometimes and I use the whirlpool most every day,� says the 5-3 Velasquez, 40, who also limits himself to one meal a day. I average (losing) from one to three (pounds).�

Vasquez, 5-2 and 43, weighed 102 pounds early in his career. Now he settles for a riding weight of 112 or 113.

“I usually skip some of the meals, eat once a day,� he said. “And I go to the sweat box every day. Don’t make any difference, I go in to take one or two pounds off, just to maintain my weight. If I don’t, I get to 117, ‘16, that easily. If I don’t reduce, I won’t be able to eat the way I like to.�

Lovato visits the hot box daily--often for at least two hours--to make 113.

“I’ve pulled five and six pounds in one day before,� Lovato said. Usually, though, he goes into the room for about two hours to drop three pounds of water.

But the hot box is not for everyone.

Especially not for Randy Romero, who almost died in 1983 while reducing at Oaklawn Park in an old-fashioned hot box--a lightbulb-heated weight cabinet that folded around the body. The bulbs caught fire, seriously burning Romero over 65% of his body.

“I can’t sweat,� Romero says. “I’m all burned out. I’ve got to flip.�

Many jockeys are unable to endure the heat and confines of the saunas. Even hot-box regulars occasionally have days when they can’t relax enough to perspire.

“I can sweat when I ride, but I go in there, and I get too claustrophobic, and I can’t break out,� Richard Migliore says.

Most heavy reducers who can’t sweat or diet off their weight end up flipping. But there are other methods--starvation, laxatives, Lasix and diet pills.

Some riders try every one of them before they find what works best for them--or realize that nothing will and quit.

Said Hall of Famer Braulio Baeza, now a trainer: “I didn’t quit. I was forced to quit. I couldn’t do the weight.�

Baeza waged incredible war against his weight. He tried no-salt diets, diets of only lettuce and broiled steak and ate one meal a day.

He tried diet pills but “they made me nervous, and I didn’t sleep at night. I used to stall-walk all night.

“I tried heaving, but nothing come, nothing happen,� he said, laughing at the absurdity of the effort. “When I did, I had a sore throat for a week from sticking my fingers in my mouth. My eyes, they bulge up.

“I tried laxatives, another thing that kept you up all night. I went to a couple doctors, but you couldn’t keep those diets. . . . I’d jog in a rubber suit, and then go sit down in a hot box and lose 11 pounds. I got cramps. I took (Lasix) a couple times. I think that is the reason I used to get more cramps.�

Once he fasted four days.

Baeza, 5-5 1/2, weighed between 140 and 145 pounds the day he quit. Within 24 hours he weighed 150. The last time he stepped on a scale, he weighed more than 170.

One prominent East Coast jockey has been a hard-core bulimic since his first season. The day he was assigned his first mount, he was 16 years old, 5 feet 4 inches tall and 126 pounds. Three weeks later, he was down to 107.

“I did everything you could name, except I didn’t heave,� he said, requesting anonymity. “Boxes of Ex-Lax, Lasix. You name it, I did it--plus running like mad, not eating.

“I tried diet pills once, and it scared me to death. I thought I was going to die. My heart speeded up, and I didn’t know what was happening, and I’ve never-- ever-- experimented with any kind of drugs.�

But he got his weight down to 104 stripped that first race, and, recalls, “From September until Thanksgiving Day, I went back and forth between Lasix, Ex-Lax, EspoTabs (a strong laxative). They hurt my stomach and I got cramps and I wasn’t doing that really a lot.�

The growing youngster knew he would be unable to maintain either the regimen or his weight for very long.

On that Thanksgiving Day, faced with making weight and badly wanting a holiday meal, he decided to eat what he wanted, then get rid of it.

“I almost killed myself,� he said of his first try at flipping. “My eyes were hanging out of my head, and I broke blood vessels in my face. I got everything up, though, and I rode the next day, and the horse won. And I said ‘Well, this is an alternative, but I have to find out how to do it correctly.

“I went through the rituals. First the fingers,� he said. Some riders learn to regurgitate by pushing on their stomachs to prompt a rolling of muscles similar to a belly dancer’s undulations.

A veteran rider eventually took the young jockey aside and showed him a method that involved drinking large quantities of liquid. Since then, he has perfected his technique and has been flipping at least once a day for seven years.

Now 5-7 he keeps down just one glass of fluid and one meal of marinated fish and greens a day to maintain his stripped weight of 109 to 110.

To relieve hunger and thirst, he binges and purges huge amounts of food and fluids.

“I’ll be honest with you,� he said. “The day I quit riding is going to be the happiest day in my life and the saddest day in my life, ‘cause I know one thing for sure: I will never, ever do it again. I mean flipping.�

In the 1960s and ‘70s, some jockeys turned to what was, at the time, a more publicly acceptable form of weight reduction, diet capsules.

New York valet John Spampinato says the pills were readily available in the early 1960s, when he began a riding career that ended about six years later, partially because of weight problems.

“I remember being at a race track where you could go to the track doctor, and, if you were licensed and riding there, he’d give a prescription for them. . . . Just show him a license and tell him you were reducing.�

There were no questions, no physicals, no follow-ups.

“They (the pills) were terrible,� Spampinato said. “They drove you crazy. I took them at the prescribed dosage too, because I was kind of afraid of them, because from when I first encountered them, it shocked me how one little pill could make such a difference in your psychology and everything else.�

Spampinato used the pills for about a year. “I wasn’t hungry for eight hours at a time,� he said. “I had all the energy that I needed, and I stood at the weight I wanted to be. But what started to happen to me is--and like said I took them at the prescribed dosage, some guys took them a handful at a time--I found myself, like, moving before the horse. . . . I was moving too quick because I was too keyed up and tight.�

Laffit Pincay’s recovery from diet pill use took much longer and involved much more suffering. The five-time Eclipse Award champion was addicted by the time he quit.

“We all started with amphetamines,� said Louisiana rider David Whited, a 30-year veteran who now maintains his weight by flipping. “Back when Laffit and I started, we all started with them. They gave you a gallon jar.�

Pincay took the pills at prescribed amounts for about eight years.

“When I quit, I thought I was going to die,� he said. “Physically, I didn’t have no strength to ride, and then, mentally, I knew that I needed them, and I knew that if I didn’t take them, I wouldn’t feel as good. And it took me a long time to get over . . . months, maybe a year.�

After experimenting a couple of years with diets, Pincay settled into a very strict, low-calorie, well- balanced diet.

But it’s the rare jockey who can maintain his weight through simple dieting.

Vince Amato maintained weight by dieting for 11 years, because he couldn’t tolerate the hot box and was physically incapable of flipping. Unlike the seemingly serene Pincay, Amato says he was a “miserable, ornery son of a gun� who found it necessary to take about two months off each year to eat and regain his sanity.

“I always had two sets of clothes in the wardrobe,� he said. One set fit a 5-5, 110-pound jockey; the other a more normally proportioned 130-pounder.

Compared to other jockeys, the always-crabby Amato got off easy.

Doug Rolfe, the nation’s fourth-leading apprentice in 1978, killed himself four years later. At the time, Jockeys’ Guild representative Al Popara told the Racing Form: “I have been talking with members of Doug’s family and they said he was concerned about increasing weight that threatened to end his jockey career.�

Prolonged dieting “causes depression,� says Dr. Ruth Kane, director of St. Francis Medical Center’s Eating Disorder Unit in Pittsburgh. “Or the depression causes them to have an improper diet. You have to feel bad. How good do you feel when you want to eat and you can’t eat? What kind of a life do you have? There’s no pleasure in it. All you do is drive yourself, and you must be disgusted with the way you live.�

Her assessment echoes the complaints of Jose Santos on a day he took Lasix to atone for being “out with my family and eating good� the day before.

“I hate the people, the people talking about jockeys winning a lot of money,� Santos said. “We win a lot of money, but it’s really--they stay at home, don’t eat too much, go into the hot box. It’s not easy. It’s work.�

Steve Brooks, winner of nearly 4,500 races and the 1949 Kentucky Derby, died Sept. 23, 1979, at 58 after surgery for a torn esophagus. Newspapers said the esophagus was torn in a fall at Arlington Park several weeks earlier. Brooks was an admitted flipper.

“A ruptured esophagus or a ruptured stomach is one of the rare, but possible fatal complications of an eating disorder,� Dr. Kane said. “I would say probably in his case, if he was bulimic, the esophagus was probably not that strong, (from) retching and doing that reverse kind of thing. So maybe the fall from the horse shouldn’t have (torn the esophagus).�

A study conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s medical school, Western Psych and Presbyterian-University Hospital and authored by Dr. David H. Van Thiel suggests other less serious gastrointestinal disturbances are much more frequent by-products of bulimia.

Five of the 11 bulimics studied were diagnosed as having “ulcerative esophagitis, erosive gastritis, duodenal ulcer and delayed gastric emptying.� The report concludes that the problems “could have been both a result of and contribute to the symptomatology of these patients.�

Another possible by-product of bulimia, “is electrolyte disturbances, the chemicals in the blood--and that can be quite serious,� says Dr. Walter Kaye, director of the Inpatient Eating Disorders program run by Pitt and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

Potassium, which regulates muscle contraction, the conduction of the heart muscles and cardiac rhythm, is one of the electrolytes drained from the body by heaving, as well as by diuretics and laxatives.

Some bulimic jockeys argue that they are not in danger because they heave without struggling. They also say they limit or eliminate potential damage by regulating how often they binge and purge and by taking vitamins, potassium and sodium.

“We don’t really know,� Kaye said. “I think it’s like almost anything, the more extreme the behavior, the more the likelihood there’s going to some extreme consequence. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of ‘I don’t knows’ in this area.�

Bulimic jockeys also defend their method of weight reduction as being less dangerous than the use of Lasix or the hot box. The problems some hot box and Lasix users have suffered and other riders have witnessed are frightening.

Spampinato awoke one morning during the period he relied on a diuretic and saw blood in his urine. His doctor told him he had taken so much water from his system that his bladder had collapsed. Spampinato also gets frequent kidney infections.

Ron Ardoin, who rides the Arkansas-Louisiana circuit, says that when he takes Lasix: “I can’t get out of bed for two days afterward. I get so weak.�

Active and retired riders--including Hall of Famer Eric Guerin, Martens, Santos, Baeza and Lovato--complained of muscle cramps, fatigue or back or kidney pain from taking the drug.

Kaye says that Lasix--and any other chemical diuretic or laxative--probably poses a greater short-term risk than bulimia.

“These people are really playing with fire,� he said. “Do you have any kind of death rate on them? The major issue here is that it’s real easy to screw up your electrolytes. The body, fortunately, is capable of really compensating, especially when you’re young and healthy. But there’s a limit, and people do die with eating disorders. I would say these people would say themselves they’re at all kinds of risk.�

Thousands of hours and millions of dollars are spent improving the bloodlines and racing performances of thoroughbreds, but the racing industry has largely ignored the physical and mental suffering of jockeys.

Even the riders themselves try not to think about their dilemma.

Specialists in eating disorders suspect that riders may be denying and dehydrating themselves to the point of early death.

“This would really make an interesting study,� said Dr. Kaye. “What happens to these people--from our standpoint, it would be scientifically valuable.

“It sounds like a lot of these people are chronically starved. How ever they’re doing it, they’re still chronically starved. You have to raise the question ‘Are they malnourished then?’

“I just don’t think we know. We don’t even know what happens to anorexics. We’ve known about them for a fairly long time, but very few follow-up studies have been done.

“Your body has a lot of excess capacity, and when you’re young, you can do pretty horrible things to yourself, and it may not show up right away. But the older you get, the harder it is to compensate. . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are dying from it--sweatboxes, diuretics, whatever.�

Neither would a lot of the jockeys.

“I’ve thought about that too,� said one. “It doesn’t bother me too much. Everybody has something they have to do in life. . . . So I have to be me and do what I love and what I do best. That’s what life is. Without this, life isn’t as important as it will be.�

He referred to a friend he pulled unconscious from a hot box. The friend later resumed riding, only to become critically ill trying to follow a popular diet.

“Last summer, he was like 145 pounds and he said, ‘That’s it,’ and he completely gave up on it.�

But this summer, the jockey read that his friend had ridden at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire.

“(It) means he weighed about (114 or 115), and I talked to a mutual friend who saw him and said he looks terrible and he doesn’t know if he can keep doing it, but he wants to try.

“See, this is how racing gets into you. You’re willing to pay the price. He actually, truly, almost died. He took a year, but he couldn’t fight back that feeling (of) ‘I’ve got to do it again.’ �

During his career, Baeza often asked himself why he tortured himself to ride. The answer? “I like it.�

“There is nothing in this world like riding horses,� Baeza said. “If you run a race and you feel this, the sensation of passing the horses and winning--you can’t compare it, the thrill of it.�

Romance, though, obviously is not the only reason reducing riders stick with the sport.

For the ones at the top there is big money. Last year, Santos won more than $11 million in purses, of which he personally grossed about 10%.

And, for the ones at the bottom, sometimes there is nothing else.

“They’re going to do what they want to do to make a living,� said former rider Eddie Donnally, now a turf writer for the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t want to sound haughty here--a lot of jockeys go on to do great things. But it’s hard for jockeys to change jobs. Any professional athlete. And if they don’t have an out, they’re going to kill themselves, literally, to stay in.�

To reduce the suffering and dangers inherent in the jockey’s struggle to make weight, there is one obvious solution: Raise the scale of weights.

Jockeys ride a few pounds heavier in Hong Kong and Europe. Jorge Velasquez, for example, who weighs in at 113 or 114 pounds with tack in the United States, rode at between 118 and 123 during the several months he worked in France last year. That higher scale also has lured Kentucky Derby winner Steve Cauthen and Cash Asmussen across the Atlantic.

Velasquez says he was “much healthier, much better� at the higher weight.

“I think if you increased the weights a little bit, horses that are getting in with 109, they might get 115, 114,� Velasquez says. “This way, you have a better chance. I know the riders are going to be stronger on top of the horses. They going to ride better for the trainers, the owners.�

Pincay, as did many other jockeys, agreed.

“The horses won’t feel it,� Pincay said. “No one’s going to feel it, believe me. It won’t break them down. Under 120 pounds, it doesn’t make a bit of difference to a horse. Believe me. I know.

“I’d say if a horse carries 113 pounds, 112 pounds, and I ride a horse maybe five pounds over, 117--if the guy wants five pounds less, he can find an apprentice who can do 107, and then that’s a difference, a 10-pound difference. But if the horse carries 120 pounds, and he wants 115 pounds, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. None. Breaks in a race is what makes racing.�

Most trainers believe otherwise.

“I think the more weight you put on horses, the more chance you have of shortening their racing career,� says trainer Charlie Whittingham. “Five pounds makes a lot of difference--it just depends how far you’re running and what kind of horse you’re running.�

LeRoy Jolley concurred.

“I think over a period of time, when horses run as most ordinary horses run, 15 to 18 times a year--as opposed to very good horses who run 9, 10, 11 times a year--over a period of time, by putting additional weight on a horse that runs a lot, I certainly don’t think it benefits the horse,� Jolley said.

And then there are the trainers who enter races according to handicap advantages--that is when they are getting weight from older or better horses.

California trainer Eddie Gregson, a Stanford graduate, gave an example.

“When I’m running a 3-year-old against older horses in June, running in a longer distance, the fact that the horses can get in that race with 110 or 111 pounds and the favorite, which is an older horse, has to give me 11 or 12 means something,� Gregson said.

There is a more compelling argument for leaving the scale of weights as it is--one that even some jockeys pointed out.

Jolley said: “I think if you raised the thing 10 pounds, there would be guys that’d be doing overweight. . . . Everybody would just blow up by five pounds and probably take less care of themselves. My feeling is, jockeys ride at their absolute best at their absolute lightest. They perform better.

“(Racing) is a sacrifice business. You simply have to sacrifice to do what you’re supposed to do.�

Whited shares that view.

“It’s just as hard for me to do 120 as it is to do 112, because what you do, you get to that line of what you know you have to do,� Whited said. “If you come in every day and you know the scale of weights is up to 120 and you have to weigh 120 every day, well, what you’re going to do is put those extra pounds on, and you’re going to get to that 120.

“I feel the riders can stay trim at the riding weight. It’s just they have to work a little harder at it.�

Another possible remedy is education.

All jockeys, jocks’ room attendants and track officials need to learn the inherent dangers of severe dieting, eating disorders and dehydration.

“A lot of race tracks are unaware of the problems jockeys have in reducing and making weight,� said the Jockeys’ Guild’s John Giovanni.

An existing rule stipulating jockeys must be out of the hot box one hour before they race may be too inflexible, but the monitoring of hot-boxers would seem a must.

Increased medical supervision also seems in order--especially by eating disorder specialists or sports medicine experts who could keep a trained eye on the jockeys’ electrolyte and energy levels through periodic blood tests and other scientific screenings. They could use solid medical evidence to bench unsound jockeys who give no behavioral clue to their problems.

These specialists could also guide riders through healthier means of reducing or maintaining weight. Dr. Kane believes that a jockey could remain healthy at low weight for years if he followed a balanced diet similar to Pincay’s.