Jeff Lucas: Life After Tabasco Cat All But Killed Him

[Patuxet]

This will probably be the Eclipse award-winning story of the year. Very moving and detailed. For example this scene involving Jeff's son Brady:

Last spring, three weeks before Brady’s Air Force Academy graduation, he attended the Derby, where Wayne was saddling both Will Take Charge and Oxbow. Minutes before the call of “Riders Up!” in he crowded Churchill Downs paddock, Wayne told Brady, “Go give Gary [Stevens] a leg up on Oxbow.” The two Lukas horses were stalled too far apart for Wayne to leg up both of his riders. Brady had never hoisted a jockey onto a racehorse, and as he nervously cradled Stevens’s shin, the jockey said to him, “Twenty-five years ago, your old man legged me up on Winning Colors.”

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/longfo ... &eref=sihp

[ct2346]

Totally agree. Excellent. Hand the award over now.

[valjoe]

from the article

Jeff did what horsemen are taught to do: He stood in Tabasco Cat’s path and waved his arms

I don't know, i was always told to get the @#%$ out of the way.

[Jeff]

I've only ever stood in front of horses running at me with a whip or a bat intending to get a good lick or wack on any horse expecting to run over me, otherwise get the $%!@ out of the way.

[karenkarenn]

In 20 years of being in the horse industry not once did I ever stand infront of a horse coming at me, nor was I EVER told to stand there while the horse was coming towards me. Let alone have whip or something to make me look big. Always direct the horse to another side, never onto someone else.

[TJ]

Believe it or not, many horseman/woman were taught or otherwise learned by experience to stand in front of a loose horse to slow them down...mainly because we were fearful the horse would get hurt or hurt somebody else. Most race horses that get loose, will respond (alter course, slow down) when they see a person standing in front of them waving their arms in the air and yelling. Horses won't run head long into anything they see in front of them. Tabasco Cat was a tough, good feeling horse to begin with and when he got loose that day, he wasn't immediately phased by Jeff's attempt to slow him down as many other horses would have been. This is, as said in the article, a common practice and if you ever see a loose horse on the racetrack you will see someone attempt to slow or alter the horses course by doing exactly what Jeff did that fateful day. Unfortunately for Jeff, Tabasco Cat was not distracted by Jeff's attempt to slow him down and Jeff realized this before it happened. He knew he had to move out of his path and the path he decided upon, was the same one Tabasco Cat took, when he too realized, they were headed for a collision.
It was good to see him again and to read he is doing well...at peace and happy after that life altering event. Watch the video below and you will hear Jeff explain what he did in his own words. TJ
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/video/ ... lustrated/

[Joltman]

great article

jm

[kezeli]

Hate to say it but I think Tabasco Cat was the type of horse to do this intentionly, and that is what I think he did. I have met a few of those and you don't know how bad they are untill they are about 4 or 5.