Former Jockey's Book: Ride the White Horse
Sept 17, 2013 7:37:05 GMT -5
Post by Evelyn on Sept 17, 2013 7:37:05 GMT -5
There's an article in DRF about this book. (below) Found it on Amazon. Anyone remember Eddie Donnally?
Donnally turns from his troubled past
www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/180-7988675-3454363?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ride+the+white+horse+by+mary+simon
Former jockey Eddie Donnally turns from his troubled past
By Mary Simon
DRF
Three decades have passed since Eddie Donnally last rode a flesh-and-blood racehorse, and still he conjures them up in the shadowland of sleep. But for more than 50 of his now 70 years, Donnally’s real life was anything but a pleasant dream. Nightmares haunted him day and night, plagued him, fed on him − and conversely, he fed on them − often serving up his own generous helpings of personal despair before returning for seconds, even thirds. Yet, he is convinced that through the span of this dangerous co-relationship, something beyond the darkness was there, watching, waiting, ultimately showing him the way out.
Donnally had been a jockey, a blue-collar guy who from 1963 to 1982 risked his life 10,279 times, with 1,177 wins to show for it, mostly at second-tier tracks, on basement-level mounts. By the numbers, Donnally was decent at what he did, but like most in his profession he missed the bus to that rarified mountaintop inhabited by Shoemakers, Pincays, and McCarrons. He never rode in a Triple Crown race or captured a Grade 1 and rarely got first call on a runner of promise, but he did manage to grab his moment in the national spotlight. Sadly, it was for the wrongest of reasons.
Throughout the 1970s Donnally was at his peak, every day donning silks, guiding fractious Thoroughbreds to post, and winning his share of races. Off the track, however, he was an angry, damaged young man on a downhill slide, gripping his dreams in clenched fists but watching them slip through his fingers like so much smoke. Before the decade was out, the bullet points on his résumé would read jockey, husband, father, alcoholic, drug addict, and indicted race fixer.
On Oct. 16, 1974, Donnally, then 31, rather casually and spontaneously, made the worst decision of his life, one that put him on the outs with both sides of the law. His crime? Well, it depends on whom you asked. According to the Feds, it was his accepting $800 to finish out of the money in a cheap race at Suffolk Downs. According to the mob? He won. What followed was an epic fall from grace, one that propelled Donnally down a life path littered with substance abuse, suicide attempts, broken marriages, promiscuity, mental illness, arrest and imprisonment, homelessness, hopelessness, abject loneliness. How could one possibly survive this, let alone move forward with purpose? Many do not. This man did.
Full article
www.drf.com/news/former-jockey-eddie-donnally-turns-his-troubled-past
Donnally turns from his troubled past
www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/180-7988675-3454363?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ride+the+white+horse+by+mary+simon
Former jockey Eddie Donnally turns from his troubled past
By Mary Simon
DRF
Three decades have passed since Eddie Donnally last rode a flesh-and-blood racehorse, and still he conjures them up in the shadowland of sleep. But for more than 50 of his now 70 years, Donnally’s real life was anything but a pleasant dream. Nightmares haunted him day and night, plagued him, fed on him − and conversely, he fed on them − often serving up his own generous helpings of personal despair before returning for seconds, even thirds. Yet, he is convinced that through the span of this dangerous co-relationship, something beyond the darkness was there, watching, waiting, ultimately showing him the way out.
Donnally had been a jockey, a blue-collar guy who from 1963 to 1982 risked his life 10,279 times, with 1,177 wins to show for it, mostly at second-tier tracks, on basement-level mounts. By the numbers, Donnally was decent at what he did, but like most in his profession he missed the bus to that rarified mountaintop inhabited by Shoemakers, Pincays, and McCarrons. He never rode in a Triple Crown race or captured a Grade 1 and rarely got first call on a runner of promise, but he did manage to grab his moment in the national spotlight. Sadly, it was for the wrongest of reasons.
Throughout the 1970s Donnally was at his peak, every day donning silks, guiding fractious Thoroughbreds to post, and winning his share of races. Off the track, however, he was an angry, damaged young man on a downhill slide, gripping his dreams in clenched fists but watching them slip through his fingers like so much smoke. Before the decade was out, the bullet points on his résumé would read jockey, husband, father, alcoholic, drug addict, and indicted race fixer.
On Oct. 16, 1974, Donnally, then 31, rather casually and spontaneously, made the worst decision of his life, one that put him on the outs with both sides of the law. His crime? Well, it depends on whom you asked. According to the Feds, it was his accepting $800 to finish out of the money in a cheap race at Suffolk Downs. According to the mob? He won. What followed was an epic fall from grace, one that propelled Donnally down a life path littered with substance abuse, suicide attempts, broken marriages, promiscuity, mental illness, arrest and imprisonment, homelessness, hopelessness, abject loneliness. How could one possibly survive this, let alone move forward with purpose? Many do not. This man did.
Full article
www.drf.com/news/former-jockey-eddie-donnally-turns-his-troubled-past