‘Extremely dark’: Safety concerns raised before jockey’s death on ‘bush track’

The Age

Adam Cooper

November 22, 2021

As the two racehorses cantered that dark morning, Jaimee Hayes didn’t see what caused her and riding companion Mikaela Claridge to be thrown from their saddles. 

Ms Hayes, an experienced track rider at Cranbourne Turf Club’s training complex, had previously fallen from her horse when a wallaby ventured onto the sand trails, an unlit section that runs through bush and scrub, away from the main tracks where hundreds of racehorses run every day. 

Ms Hayes suspected it was wildlife that startled the two horses about 4.35am on August 30, 2019. “They looked at something on my right and spooked, and slammed the brakes on,” she said on Monday. 

 “I screamed out, ‘Mik, are you all right?’ and I didn’t get a response.”

Both riders fell, but where Ms Hayes landedon her knees, Ms Claridge suffered criticalhead injuries. The 22-year-old apprenticejockey didn’t regain consciousness and died atthe scene.

Ms Claridge grew up with horses, competed in400 races as a jockey and was riding a horseconsidered calm and placid, MelbourneMagistrates Court heard.

Minutes before the fall, Ms Claridge told herfriend it was dark that early morning as theyapproached the sand trails, which has nolighting and where riders regularly rely onmoonlight.

“She just made note that it was extremelydark. She didn’t use the words that it was toodark,” Ms Hayes said.

But workplace regulator WorkSafe alleges Cranbourne Turf Club and Saloon Park - the companyowned by horse trainer Ken Keys and who employed the riders - breached workplace safety lawsby allowing Ms Claridge to ride in insufficient light when the conditions posed a risk to herhealth and safety.

The companies face a combined eight charges of workplace safety breaches and will enter a pleaat the end of this week’s hearing if magistrate Frances Medina finds there is enough evidence tocommit them to stand trial.

Prosecutor Colin Mandy, SC, told the court the companies should have reasonably known it wasa risk to their employees’ safety to have them ride on the sand trails before daylight, and thatthe risks were well known. The section was also known as the “bush track” or “the paddock”, hesaid.

Ms Hayes couldn’t recall whether she and Ms Claridge were specifically instructed to get theirhorses to canter that morning by Mr Keys’ wife, Louise, but said she knew that was expected.

“It’s just the work we are told to do, so we just go out whether we could see or couldn’t see,” shesaid.

She said she never raised her concern about the section to either the trainer or the club, but wasaware of other riders who did.

 “They said, ‘what will it take to close this track or get lights put up’?” she said.

Former jockey Chelsea Hall, who flew from Brisbane to Melbourne when she learned of herfriend’s death, said she experienced near misses herself riding through the scrub inCranbourne, where she estimated the sand trails track was three metres wide at its narrowestpoint.

She knew of one trainer who only let his riders on the sand trails in daylight.

“He didn’t like it because he’s a rider himself ... just because you couldn’t see if it was reallydark,” she said.

The hearing continues on Tuesday.

 Extremely dark’: Safety concerns raised before jockey’s death on ‘bush track’ 

The Age

By Adam Cooper 

November 22, 2021 

As the two racehorses cantered that dark morning, Jaimee Hayes didn’t see what caused her and riding companion Mikaela Claridge to be thrown from their saddles. 

Ms Hayes, an experienced track rider at Cranbourne Turf Club’s training complex, had previously fallen from her horse when a wallaby ventured onto the sand trails, an unlit section that runs through bush and scrub, away from the main tracks where hundreds of racehorses run every day. 

Jockey Mikaela Claridge died in a trackwork fall in August 2019. Ms Hayes suspected it was wildlife that startled the two horses about 4.35am on August 30, 2019. “They looked at something on my right and spooked, and slammed the brakes on,” she said on Monday. 

“I screamed out, ‘Mik, are you all right?’ and I didn’t get a response.”

Both riders fell, but where Ms Hayes landedon her knees, Ms Claridge suffered criticalhead injuries. The 22-year-old apprenticejockey didn’t regain consciousness and died atthe scene.

Ms Claridge grew up with horses, competed in400 races as a jockey and was riding a horseconsidered calm and placid, MelbourneMagistrates Court heard.

Minutes before the fall, Ms Claridge told herfriend it was dark that early morning as theyapproached the sand trails, which has nolighting and where riders regularly rely onmoonlight.

“She just made note that it was extremelydark. She didn’t use the words that it was toodark,” Ms Hayes said.

But workplace regulator WorkSafe alleges Cranbourne Turf Club and Saloon Park - the companyowned by horse trainer Ken Keys and who employed the riders - breached workplace safety lawsby allowing Ms Claridge to ride in insufficient light when the conditions posed a risk to herhealth and safety.

The companies face a combined eight charges of workplace safety breaches and will enter a pleaat the end of this week’s hearing if magistrate Frances Medina finds there is enough evidence tocommit them to stand trial.

Prosecutor Colin Mandy, SC, told the court the companies should have reasonably known it wasa risk to their employees’ safety to have them ride on the sand trails before daylight, and thatthe risks were well known. The section was also known as the “bush track” or “the paddock”, hesaid.

Ms Hayes couldn’t recall whether she and Ms Claridge were specifically instructed to get theirhorses to canter that morning by Mr Keys’ wife, Louise, but said she knew that was expected.

“It’s just the work we are told to do, so we just go out whether we could see or couldn’t see,” shesaid.

She said she never raised her concern about the section to either the trainer or the club, but wasaware of other riders who did.

 “They said, ‘what will it take to close this track or get lights put up’?” she said.

Former jockey Chelsea Hall, who flew from Brisbane to Melbourne when she learned of herfriend’s death, said she experienced near misses herself riding through the scrub inCranbourne, where she estimated the sand trails track was three metres wide at its narrowestpoint.

She knew of one trainer who only let his riders on the sand trails in daylight.

“He didn’t like it because he’s a rider himself ... just because you couldn’t see if it was reallydark,” she said.

The hearing continues on Tuesday.

The Unclaimed soldier

Thousands of veterans, especially from the Vietnam era, die alone every year

The Washington Post Democracy Dies in Darkness

By Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan

12/11/2021

DES MOINES — Everyone on the third floor of South View Manor was accounted

for except James Dean Ryan in Room #301. A police officer, checking on a worrying smell, opened his door and found Ryan facedown on his living room floor, another Vietnam veteran who died alone.

Ryan’s son and other relatives were notified, but many wanted nothing to do with him, alive or dead. No one stepped forward to bury him after his death last November. So the 66-year-old with talents for disco dancing and repairing

furniture became yet another of America’s unclaimed dead.

There is no requirement for local governments — who are responsible for unclaimed bodies — to report them to any national authority, so there is no

official count. But tens of thousands of lives in the United States end this way each year, according to a Washington Post investigation that included more than

100 interviews over six months with medical examiners and local officials from Maine to California.

A striking number — thousands every year — served in the military, especially during the Vietnam War, according to funeral directors who directly handle their bodies.

“Vietnam vets got the rawest deal of anyone,” said Jim Mowrer, an Iraq War veteran who never met Ryan but volunteered to carry his urn at his Iowa funeral in June. “We have a lot of making up to do to Vietnam vets.”

While those who served in uniform after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are publicly thanked for their service, soldiers in the 1960s and 1970s were often jeered. Back then, the United States was fighting a long war against North Vietnam, a communist nation supported by the Soviet Union and China, that many felt was unwinnable. It caused massive civilian casualties in Southeast Asia 

“One of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam — most particularly, how we treated our troops,” President Barack Obama told Vietnam veterans in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the start of the war. “You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start. . . . You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame.”

More than 8 million people served in uniform during Vietnam and those who are alive are typically in their 60s and 70s. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 530 Vietnam veterans die every day.

The overwhelming number are buried by family and friends. But a growing army of strangers are volunteering to wave flags and say prayers for the thousands who have no one.

“They’re estranged from their family. They die alone. They commit suicide,” said Linda Smith of the Missing in America Project, which helps arrange funerals for unclaimed veterans. “They don’t have anyone to mourn them — that’s what we do. The number is huge. It’s really sad.”

Last year, 1,752 unclaimed veterans were buried in the 150 veterans’ cemeteries run by the federal government, according to VA. An unknown number of others were buried in state-run cemeteries, like the Iowa Veterans Cemetery where Ryan was interred. Still more were buried in the thousands of private cemeteries all A troubled return home

Ryan was 20 and recently married when he joined the Army in 1974. His father had served during the Korean War, his grandfather fought in World War II andRyan felt it was his turn.

So the Iowa high school dropout with plans of opening a furniture-repair shop became an expert marksman with an M-16. The transition was rough.

He rarely spoke about what happened after he enlisted, but according to his exwife Linda Janes, “It did a job on him.”

He went to Fort Bragg, N.C., where his training included jumping out of planesand parachuting into mock Vietnamese villages built on the Army base. He was

never sent to Southeast Asia, nor were most of those who served during Vietnam. But Ryan was deeply disturbed by his training in survival behind enemy lines,

according to relatives. At the time, there were widely publicized accounts of the torture endured by American prisoners of war, including John McCain, a Naval officer who became a U.S. senator from Arizona. Two friends of Ryan’s were killed.

According to Ryan’s military records, he was honorably discharged, but only after being granted unexplained “excess leave.”

“He had a nervous breakdown,” said Janes, Ryan’s second wife, who married him two years after he left the Army.

One month after he returned home, his first wife, Pamela, divorced him. He seemed changed, according to those who knew him at the time, and could become

violent and angry. A judge signed a decree giving Pamela custody of their 2-yearold daughter and Ryan “his shotgun, tools and toolbox.”

A remarkable 38 percent of service members sent to Vietnam were divorced within six months of returning home, according to a study cited by VA.