Tag: NY State Wire

Bills safety Damar Hamlin eases back into practice 5 months since near-death experience

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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Wearing shorts and his familiar No. 3 blue practice jersey, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin began easing his way back into football during the team’s voluntary minicamp on Tuesday, some five months after having a near-death experience on the field.

The only thing missing was his helmet.

Though held back from taking part in team sessions, Hamlin participated in individual drills and the stretching portions to open and end practice in taking the next steps toward resuming his football career.

“We’re taking it one day at a time and just support Damar in every way possible,” coach Sean McDermott said. He otherwise did not provide any timetable as to when the player can resume practicing fully a little over a month after Hamlin was cleared to play.

The 25-year-old Hamlin went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated on the field after making what appeared to be a routine tackle during the first quarter of a game at Cincinnati, and being broadcast to a national prime-time audience on Jan. 2.

Defensive backs coach John Butler shed further light on the team’s approach to Hamlin’s practice routine by saying it’s based on constant communication between the player and the Bills medical staff.

“This is Damar’s process,” Butler said. “All we can do is listen, communicate with him and try to get on the same level as him.”

The Bills’ slow approach to Hamlin’s participation appears in line with how they’ve eased back other players coming off major injuries. And it’s understandable in regards to Hamlin, given how much time he missed during a lengthy recuperation process that limited him from much physical exertion before reporting for the team’s voluntary workout program last month.

Hamlin still required a respirator to help him breathe for several weeks after being released from the hospital in mid-January.

He has made it clear he wants to resume playing. Saying his heart was still in the game, Hamlin announced his NFL comeback a little over a month ago after being cleared to play by the Bills and several independent specialists. Not wanting to give into fear and concern, Hamlin said there was little chance of the episode recurring in revealing specialists agreed his heart stopped as a result of commotio cordis, which is a direct blow at a specific point in a heartbeat that causes cardiac arrest.

“This was a life-changing event, but it’s not the end of my story,” Hamlin said last month.

With his focus now on resuming football, Hamlin’s next steps will be no different from any other NFL player in his bid to secure a roster spot entering his third season. The Bills have two more weeks of voluntary practices before opening a mandatory minicamp in mid-June, followed by training camp opening in late July.

“It’s a miracle,” Butler said, assessing how far Hamlin has come since January.

“To have him out there, in the drills, in the walk-throughs, in the meetings and just around day to day, I think it’s incredible,” he added. “But based on where he’s going, I think he’s definitely heading the right direction.”

Hamlin’s recovery has been called remarkable by doctors who treated him. He spent the first few days of his recovery in a medically induced coma at the University Cincinnati Medical Center. His motor and cognitive skills quickly returned and he spent 10 days in hospitals in Cincinnati and Buffalo before being released.

Hamlin’s collapse led to an outpouring of support from around the NFL and across North America, with donations made to Hamlin’s charitable organization topping more than $9 million. And his recovery has been celebrated, with the player honored by the NFL, the NFL Players Association and most recently being selected by the Professional Football Writers of America as winner of the George Halas Award, which is given to an NFL player, coach or staff member who overcomes adversity to succeed.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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May 23, 2023
Surf’s up! Florida’s St. George Island beach named nation’s best in annual ranking

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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A 9-mile (14-kilometer) stretch of Florida sugar-white sand in an unspoiled natural setting alongside the Gulf of Mexico is the nation’s best beach for 2023, according to the annual ranking released Thursday by the university professor known as “Dr. Beach.”

The state park on St. George Island just off the Florida Panhandle drew the top honor from Stephen Leatherman, professor in the Department of Earth & Environment at Florida International University. This year’s top 10 list marks the 33rd year Leatherman has rated the best of America’s 650 public beaches around Memorial Day, the traditional start of summer.

St. George Island is frequently on the list. But this year what set it apart from others is its natural beauty, lack of development, abundant activities including fishing, swimming, kayaking, cycling, camping and an unparalleled view of the night sky for stargazers, Leatherman said.

“There’s just so many things that capture my imagination there,” Leatherman said in an interview. “It’s an idyllic place.”

The park covers about 2,000 acres (810 hectares) on the east end of the island, which is connected by a bridge to the mainland across Apalachicola Bay, famed for its oysters. The other sections of the island contain a small village, restaurants, rental homes and motels, but not a whole lot else.

And that’s the way Leatherman likes it.

“People can have the best of both worlds there, just miles and miles of unspoiled beaches,” he said.

The island has been battered over the decades by tropical storms, most recently by Hurricane Michael in October 2018. That deadly Category 5 storm made landfall about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest in Mexico Beach, but packed enough punch to level many St. George Island sand dunes and damage park facilities such as picnic pavilions and restrooms.

“Since that time, staff and volunteers have made great strides toward getting the park back to normal,” park officials said on its website.

In 2005, a 153-year-old lighthouse on nearby, uninhabited Little St. George Island collapsed into the Gulf due to storms and erosion. It was rebuilt on the main island after volunteers salvaged 22,000 of the original bricks and found the 19th-century plans at the National Archives. The new location means people can more easily trek to the top for a panoramic view.

Leatherman uses 50 criteria to evaluate beaches including sand type, wave action, whether lifeguards are present, presence of wildlife, the level of development and crowding, and many other factors. Extra credit is given to beaches that forbid cigarette smoking, mainly because of the need to prevent discarded butts. None were seen during a recent visit to St. George Island, he said.

“I had to give them more credit for that,” Leatherman said. “I think people are coming around to the point of view that our beaches are some of our greatest recreational areas. You can go to the beach and you can do so many things.”

A second Florida Gulf coast beach, Caladesi Island State Park near Clearwater and Dunedin, ranks fourth on the list this year. It’s reachable mainly by ferry and private boat, or a person could walk a fairly good distance there from Clearwater Beach depending on the tides. Despite the name, Caladesi isn’t a true island any longer because an inlet closed off, Leatherman said.

“The white beach is composed of crystalline quartz sand, which is soft and cushy at the water’s edge, inviting one to take a dip in the sparkling clear waters,” he said.

Caladesi has boardwalk nature trails and kayaking through mangroves that are home to numerous species of fish, birds and other animals.

Hawaii placed three beaches on the list, more than any other state. Florida was next with two.

Here is Dr. Beach’s complete 2023 top 10:

1. St. George Island State Park, Florida Panhandle

2. Duke Kahanamoku Beach, Oahu, Hawaii

3. Coopers Beach, Southampton, New York

4. Caladesi Island State Park, Dunedin/Clearwater, Florida

5. Lighthouse Beach, Buxton, Outer Banks of North Carolina

6. Coronado Beach, San Diego

7. Wailea Beach, Maui, Hawaii

8. Beachwalker Park, Kiawah Island, South Carolina

9. Poipu Beach, Kauai, Hawaii

10. Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

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May 23, 2023
Court rules against Prince Harry’s offer to personally pay for police protection in UK

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LONDON (AP) — A London judge rejected Prince Harry’s bid to pay for his own police protection Tuesday, denying the royal’s request to challenge the U.K. government in court.

The British government stopped providing security after Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, and his wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, quit their royal duties and moved to California in 2020. It then rejected his offer to pay for protection when he visits home.

A lawyer for the government argued in court that it was not appropriate to allow hiring “police officers as private bodyguards for the wealthy.”

Justice Martin Chamberlain said there was nothing “incoherent or illogical” in the government’s reasoning to deny the Duke of Sussex’s request to hire police bodyguards at his own expense. He said providing private protection for an individual was different from paying police as security at sporting and other events.

Further, he said it could strain police resources, set a precedent and be seen as unfair.

“If privately funded protective security were permitted, a less wealthy individual would feel unfairly treated, the availability of a limited specialist resource would be reduced and a precedent would have been set which it would be difficult to contain,” Chamberlain wrote.

Harry has said he doesn’t feel safe visiting Britain with his young children, and has cited aggressive press photographers that chased him after an event in 2021.

The case was argued last week on the same day Harry and Meghan sought cover from paparazzi in a New York police station after a spokesperson said they had been involved in a “near catastrophic car chase” with photographers after a gala event.

No one was injured and no citations given, but police said photographers made it challenging for the couple to get where they were going.

The couple have said they fund their own security. Former President Donald Trump said the U.S. government wouldn’t pay to protect them.

While Harry lost the case to pay police to protect him in the U.K., he could end up with a bigger prize. Another judge allowed his case to proceed challenging the decision to deny him government-paid security.

The prince has four other active legal cases in London courts, all of them against British tabloid publishers over allegations of phone hacking or libel.

Harry is due to testify next month in an ongoing trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror over allegations it used illegal means to gather material for dozens of articles about the duke, dating back as far as the 1990s.

Judges are currently weighing whether two other phone hacking cases can go to trial against the publishers of the Daily Mail and The Sun.

Lawyers for the newspapers have argued the claims were brought well beyond a six-year time limit. Harry’s lawyer has argued that an exception should be granted because the publishers were deceptive about the hacking and other unlawful information gathering so he couldn’t discover it soon enough.

A judge is also considering whether to toss out Harry’s libel lawsuit against the Mail on Sunday over an article alleging he tried to hush up his challenge to pay for police security.

The newspaper has claimed it was expressing an “honest opinion,” but a judge in a preliminary ruling found it defamatory.

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May 23, 2023
Caustic feedback, serious injuries and the quiet mental health suffering of horse racing jockeys

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BALTIMORE (AP) — Eurico Rosa da Silva was in a dark place.

On the track, the jockey in his early 30s was winning races and making money. At home, he was fighting suicidal thoughts every day.

“I got to the point where I have no more choice but to go for help,” he recalled recently. “I went because if I have no choice, I would kill myself.”

Da Silva got help in 2006 and rode for more than a decade before retiring. He’s one of the lucky ones.

Earlier this year, horse racing was stunned by the suicides less than six weeks apart of two young jockeys, 23-year-old Avery Whisman and 29-year-old Alex Canchari. A friend of Whisman’s, Triple Crown-winning rider Mike Smith, said he has seen similar tragedies over three decades.

“I know several riders that I knew very well committed suicide when it was all said and done,” Smith said. “This is not all of a sudden just happening. It’s been going on. You just never heard of it.”

The dangers of riding thoroughbreds at high speed add up to an average of two jockeys dying from racing each year and 60 being paralyzed, according to one industry veteran, citing data dating to 1940. Combine that with criticism from owners, trainers and bettors and the need to maintain the low weight necessary to establish a career, and jockeys have been quietly suffering for as long as they have been riding horses.

While jockeys interviewed for this story worry that racing has lagged behind other sports in accepting the importance of their mental health on the job, there is hope that renewed conversation about it prompts real change.

“This needs to be addressed,” jockey Trevor McCarthy said. “We take a lot of beatings mentally and physically. With the mental and physical state, when you mix both of them together, it can be a recipe for disaster. Look, there’s proof of it, right? We lost two guys.”

McCarthy last year, like da Silva before him, sought help before it was too late. His father was a jockey, as is his father-in-law and his wife, Katie Davis McCarthy. They are all used to the ups and downs of the job, from the broken pelvis and collarbone from his spill during a race in November to the uncertain hold on a ride.

A particularly rough summer, including flying up and down the East Coast to ride, took a toll on McCarthy, who at 118 pounds could feel his diet and lack of calories affect his work. He wanted to quit.

“I was going absolutely nuts, and my body couldn’t handle it,” McCarthy said. “You’re constantly going through mind games. And I think a lot of guys get caught up in that with the weight and the mind game of not doing good or thinking they’re not good enough.”

His wife made him promise to talk to a sports therapist. McCarthy did so for months, learning how to find a better work-life balance that has helped him win 28 races already this year.

Now 47, da Silva was named Canada’s best jockey seven times and is the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

“In 30 years of riding horses, I can say to you that I never heard anybody talk about the emotional pain, never talked about going for help,” said da Silva, who’s now a mental health coach and spoke Tuesday at the first jockey mental health symposium in Lexington, Kentucky. “I approached many jockeys that I feel like they need help, and many times I said, ‘Go for help.’ I motivate them to go for help. They just listen, but they don’t really want to talk about.”

Dr. Ciara Losty of South East Technological University in Waterford, Ireland, pointed out that jockeys have an “underdeveloped sense of self inside of their sport,” compared to team sport or Olympic athletes who are less likely to burn out because they seek out other activities. She said jockeys can also be less familiar with mental health topics because of low literacy levels and lack the support system of a coach or coaching staff.

“Maintaining a low weight and obviously disordered eating is a big part of it,” said Losty, who co-authored a 2018 study on jockey mental health. “Being a jockey, you have a risk of serious injuries, and if you’ve had a serious injury the fear of re-injury when you engage or get back up on the horse again may impact your performance or lead you to some kind of distress.”

Dr. Lewis King, now at Ireland’s Technological University of the Shannon, did his doctoral degree in 2021 on the subject because he wanted to explore what makes jockeys susceptible to mental health problems and what stopped them from seeking help. In talking to 84 jockeys in Ireland, he said, he found 61% met the threshold for adverse alcohol use, 35% for depression and 27% for anxiety.

King’s research showed that despite nearly 80% of jockeys having at least one common mental health disorder, only a third saw a professional. He said most feared losing their jobs.

“The main barrier was stigma and the negative perceptions of others,” King said. “But primarily it was related to the negative perceptions of trainers. There was a perception within the jockeys I interviewed that if they spoke about their mental health issues or it somehow got back to their trainer that it may impact whether they get rides. The trainer may perceive them as not in the right headspace, for instance, to ride their horses.”

Trainers told King and his colleagues they felt similar worries about sharing their own mental health concerns with owners.

McCarthy, who has been a jockey since 2011, said in recent months he has actually confronted trainers in the U.S., telling them to ease up on berating fellow jockeys after races.

The entire cycle speaks to horse racing being “an old-school sport,” McCarthy said. Losty pinned the lack of progress in mental health on the masculinized nature of the industry, and da Silva said the topic is still “taboo” in racing.

“Asking for help in our sport is almost a sign of weakness, sad to say,” said Smith, who rode Justify to the Triple Crown in 2018 and is still riding at 57. “You certainly don’t want to show any signs of that. We’re supposed to be tough and be able to handle it all.”

The Jockeys’ Guild and Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority recently sent out an anonymous survey — the first of its kind — to gauge the best ways to support riders’ mental health and wellbeing, a hotline is among the ideas being considered.

The results of that survey, returned by 230 jockeys, included 10% describing their mental health as “poor,” a third saying sadness, depression or anxiety were causing challenges in their daily life over the past month and 93% expressing concern about financial stability and providing for their families.

Surveyed jockeys also said money, weight concerns and the pressure to win were among the biggest stressors; they cited the fear of losing work and a stigma around seeking support as barriers to seeking help.

“It’s important for the industry to come together on this issue and other issues to grow our industry and make sure equine and human athletes are taken care of,” said Jockeys’ Guild president and CEO Terry Meyocks, a third-generation horseman whose daughter, Abby, is married to Kentucky Derby-winning jockey Javier Castellano.

“It’s important that people talk about it,” said Meyocks, who noted an average of two jockeys have died and 60 have been paralyzed annually dating to 1940.

McCarthy only started talking seriously about it after getting married and daughter Riley was born, knowing he’s at the leading edge of thinking about mental health and how far behind other jockeys are.

“We’re just behind the 8-ball a little bit with that,” he said. “It’s going to be baby steps, but we have a long way to go.”

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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May 23, 2023