horses. I said, 'why?' They said, 'we just got an
anonymous call that they are going to shoot
you.' I said, they killed the President of the
United States and he had people watching
him. Do you think that me not riding today is
going to protect me from dying? What about
tomorrow and the next day and the next day?
I don't want to live my life thinking that if I
leave my house somebody is going to kill me.
Then I would never be a jockey. So they made
me parade for nine days all by myself. They
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riders. That was embarrassing to me because
it seemed they were making a bullseye out of
me, like, 'if you want to kill him, here he is, go
get him.' I don't think that was the way they
should have handled it. They called and said
they were going to kill a jockey, so you send
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saying that because it happened to me. I don't
care who it is, you can't make a target out of a
person.
Another embarrassing situation that I had
in my life was the day I rode Jim French in the
1971 Belmont. There were about 14 horses
in the race and they called me and to see the
stewards before I went to the paddock. They
searched me because someone called and said
I was going to ride with an electric (device).
I got there and there was a whole bunch of
people, detectives, and they made me pull
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was very embarrassing. I wish it would happen
now. I would own the racetrack.
