If anyone ever stands up and says horse racing isn't a sport, direct them to go and talk to Rick Zeron. "Let's put it this way, I'm really pleased that the Racing Commission (ORC) made safety vests mandatory," he told
Trot Insider.
Zeron's comments come just a day after an accident at Woodbine Racetrack that could have been much worse.
Up behind four-year-old Western Maverick gelding Medoland Glenno, Zeron left from the rail with the Shawn Irwin pupil and was fourth into a snappy 26-second opening quarter. At the beginning of the backstretch in the second quarter, Zeron's mount gave everyone quite a scare.
"It was really strange because my horse had never done it before, but he stuck his toes right in [the racetrack]," Zeron told Trot Insider. "It was a real shock. He didn't give me much of an indication that he was going to do it, just a split second. I yelled as loud as I could to everyone behind me, but as I said, it happened really fast."
Driver Keith Oliver, aboard Yankee Luke, was keeping up tight with Zeron. When the action came to a halt in front of him, there simply wasn't anywhere to go.
"Keith Oliver was behind me and his horse was a big horse," Zeron explained. "His knees went right up into my back. I got flipped out of the bike and landed pretty hard on my left side. To tell you the honest truth, I though Keith was going right over me."
Zeron told Trot Insider that he received quite a bit of bruising along his left side, hurt his arm, and got a pretty bad charley horse. He explained that he wasn't exactly sure what happened to his mount, but said that the horse may have suffered a broken ankle in the incident.
"It's scary, there is no doubt about it. You know, you go a good clip to the quarter, in about 26 seconds, which works out to about 30 miles an hour. It's both hard and scary when you grind to a halt like that."
Zeron concurred that the accident could have been quite bad and that he was lucky. He ended up booking off the rest of his drives on the Monday card after the accident, but didn't require medical attention at the time. Although, when contacted by Trot Insider this afternoon, Zeron was just leaving the Mississauga office of his homeopathic doctor, Sushila Lalsingh. That doesn't mean that the horseman is going to be taking any time off going forward.
"Oh yeah, I was at the barn this morning," he told Trot Insider. "The show must go on. I've got a business to run. Although, it's going to be really nice that I have two days off from racing -- that couldn't have come at a better time."