If it’s 9 May, it must be the 87th anniversary of jockey Ralph Neves competing in five races and not winning any of them. It wouldn’t have been remarkable had he not died the previous day.
Well, to be strictly accurate, he ‘died’. According to the LA Times,
Neves was in first place in a close race for the riding title at Bay Meadows (a track in San Mateo) with a few other jockeys. The prize was $500 and a gold watch awarded by Bing Crosby.
But…
The rest of the details vary, because the story has been told and retold, but either he was taken to the track infirmary on the back of a truck, or he was actually toe-tagged in a nearby mortuary.
Either way, someone called it, and
At some point, though, a doctor gave him a shot of adrenaline, and he made like the ‘I’m not dead yet’ man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. To such an extent, in fact, that (according to SFGATE)
By the time the 9 May 1936 edition of the San Francisco Examiner was running the headline
Neves, Called Dead in Fall, Denies It.
…he was gearing up to do well enough in all five races that he won the watch and the $500.
