You're Fired for Not Whipping the Horses More

Churchill's firing of their starter, Roger Nagle, is another instance of brash, arrogant management which is their calling card. Examples of their my way or the highway, followed by slash and burn, style are easily found.

Do you remember how they demonized jockeys trying to get insurance to cover medical treatment for ON TRACK accidents? Churchill banned them from the jocks room, had them strong armed by their goons when they tried to retrieve their equipment, and called them law breakers & conspiracy mongers. With benefit of hindsight, we all can see that the jockeys would not have this coverage now if they had not taken these steps. Churchill could have prevented the drama, but their hardline approach precluded this.

Here, with the dismissal of their starter, it appears there is a difference of philosophy. Mr. Nagle believes some tactics management favors for loading horses into the gate are safety risks and are not efficacious. With regard to the specific tactics, Churchill appears to want more liberal use of many techniques already employed only when necessary such as loading horses without a jockey, and blindfolds, and others Mr. Nagle prefers to avoid such as whipping.

In true Churchill fashion, when asked about the matter they responded with more arrogance. Jim Gates only offered, "We don't comment on personnel issues." Apparently they do not care to comment on safety issues, either.

The discussion that should be taking place is whether management's approach introduces additional safety risks or that the experienced starter's approach is unnecessarily costing Churchill money. Management does not to want to have this discussion, most likely because their real goal is only to increase the speed of the load and eliminate late scratches. Perhaps with proper study of the issue we could come to some conclusions. They must not have an MBA over there that can collect data from different gate crews employing different tactics and come up with some metrics. A definitive answer about the best approach does not seem to be available without at least a bit of study, but Churchill is not interested in finding out. They just don't want to repeat the loss of handle from refunded wagers resultant from the two (yes, just two) late scratches that occurred during the 217 race fall meet.