Jockeys Guild News and Articles

Walter Blum in 1961 was the first rider to accomplish the feat, which was equaled by Chris Antley in 1984, Julie Krone in 1987, and Joe Bravo in 1994, 2003, 2005 and 2006.

 

Lezcano, 23, won the second race aboard 11-to-10 favorite Shore and added a five-length victory on Sweet Sugardaddy in the third race.

 

The Panama native guided Adjust to a 1-3/4-length score in the sixth race and Way With Words to a 4-1/4-length win race seven.  He closed the day with consecutive wins aboard Coli Bear in the $70,000 Blue Sparkler Stakes and Brush the Rail in the tenth and final race on the card.  Thoroughbred Times TODAY

Albarado has ridden Curlin to five consecutive wins, including the Stephen Foster on June 14 at Churchill Downs.  Curlin made his two previous starts under Albarado in Dubai and won the $6 million Emerates Airline Dubai Wolrd Cup (UAE-GI) on March 29 prior to winning the Stephen Foster.

 

A Lafayette, Louisiana, native Albarado earned is first win in 1990 at Evangeline Downs.  The 34-year-old Albarado rode in Louisiana, Arkansas and Chicago before moving his tack to Kentucky in 1996.  Thoroughbred Times TODAY.

"The Guild applauds the efforts of the committee to improve horse safety which will also benefit the industry as a whole," said Meyocks.  "The Guild is also greateful that the committee valued the input of the jockeys concerning the riding crop.  We will now reach out to our general membership, many of whom have not seen the recommended riding crop, to keep them up to date on the issues being discussed.

 

"The safety of the horse directly correlates with the safety of the jockey, as 57 permanently disabled riders can attest.  We stand behind the committee's efforts to make racing a better sport.  The Guild hopes to continue to work with the committee to do just that."  The Jockeys' Guild

Wall retired from race riding in 2007.  He worked as a jockey agent at Fonner Park in Grand Island, which concluded a 35-day meet on May 3.

 

Wall began his riding career in 1969, and was a regular rider on the Nebraska circuit for trainers Jack and Betty Coatney.  Wall rode Dance On the Line, a Verzy mare trained and co-owned by the Coatneys, to each of her ten stakes wins.

 

Wall also earned four stakes victories aboard Leaping Plum, including three editions of the Grasmick Handicap at Fonner.

 

A memorial service was held June 11 at Curran Funeral Chapel in Grand Island.  Thoroughbred Times.

 

The 22-year-old rider was reunited with Da' Tara for the 1-1/2 mile classic for the first time since the Tiznow colt's runner-up finish to Anak Nakal in his career debut on September 28, 2007 at Belmont Park.  After six starts and four different riders, Da' Tara had Garcia back at the reins and earned his first stakes victory in the Belmont at odds 38.50 to 1.

 

The win gave Garcia his first classic victory in only his second appearance in a Triple Crown race.  Garcia rode Mint Slewlep to a seventh-place finish in the 2007 Preakness Stakes (G I) at Pimlico Race Course.  He won with his first and only Breeders' Cup World Championships mount to date, capturing the 2007 Emirates Airline Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf  (G I) with Lahudood (GB).  Other prominent mounts include 2003 Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide, who closed his career with a three-length victory under Garcia in the Wadsworth Memorial Handicap on July 4, 2007.

 

Garcia attended jockey school in his native Peru and was the leading apprentice there in 2003.  He began riding in the United States that year and was the leading apprentice at the Meadowlands.  He shifted his tack to New York full time in 2007 after riding in Maryland and New Jersey.

 

Through Monday, Garcia has 671 wins, including 22 graded stakes wins, from 4,841 mounts that have earned $28,663,515 in purse earnings.  He currently ranks fifth in the nation by earnings, with $5,918,210, and 17th by victories with 109.  Thoroughbred Times Today

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he wanted to play shortstop for the Yankees.  The accent hasn't faded, but that dream did in a hurry.

 

By 12 he hadn't grown much.  He thought maybe he'd be a professional bowler. And somewhere in his late teens, the 5'2" Santagata took himself to Belmont Park to be a jockey.

 

"Lot of people in this game, they're born into the game," Santagata said.  "Maybe their father was a trainer or their brother was a jockey.  They just, you know, it goes down from generation to generation.  I was born on the cement in Brooklyn, New York.  You played stickball, you played baseball, I was not born into horse racing.  And it was kind of a hindrance 'cause I really didn't get started till I was 20 years old."

 

Last year was his first season racing at Colonial Downs.  He came to Virginia hoping to be a fresh face, even after all these years.  He won more money than all but five other riders at the track.

 

Maybe that was luck -- the same kind that makes a guy walk around a corner at the right time to bump into a trainer looking for a jockey to ride a big stakes race -- but Colonial Downs features lots of turf races.  And grass racing, Santagata says, is different from dirt in a way that plays to his skills.

 

"You can't always go wide all the time.  You've kind of got to sit and wait, kind of pick your way through and everybody's bunched a little bit more than they are on the dirt," Santagata said.  "And the pace is a little slower and a bit more horses in the race, its like a little chess game."

 

For all his experience, his commitment, trainers aren't always willing to take a chance on a rider closing in on 51, even one with 4,114 winners behind him.

 

"It's just trying to convince people you can still do it as you get older," he said.  "I mean, I had a trainer the other day I've ridden for last year and I've done good in the past.  I came to the track and said, 'Oh what have we got this year?'

 

"She said, 'Well, I'm going with some younger riders."

 

Santagata cluched his chest and groaned dramatically.  "I said, 'You killed me.' But what are you going to do?  You've just got to prove every day, with the mounts you have, you just have to do the best with what you have."

 

Santagata came to the track yesterday expecting to ride in three of the nine races scheduled.  One ride was a late scratch, already down in the paddock to be saddled before a paperwork error kept the horse from running.  Anotehr, Santagata admitted with a grin, was a mistake.  A trainer expecting to leg-up the younger Jozbin Z. Santana had a typo that put Santagata on her horse instead.

 

Santana got the ride.

 

Santagata finished the day with one ride, a second-place finish in the fourth race on the Virginia-bred Tatjana's Salute.  He said that's an OK first day.

 

"I always work hard," he said.  "I alaways try for second and third, for the trainers because I know they could use it.  There's so much money in this involved.  You'd be surprised how much second, third and fourth can pay.  It's good for the owner."

 

On the first day of a new meet, one scheduled to be the longest ever at Colonial Downs by five days, Santagata can afford to be optimistic.  He's sitting on 33 years worth of luck, working in a business that's provided a career and a family and a dream where never expected it.  Luck keeps bringing him back to the track, for those days when he's scheduled to ride one horse and pick up four, for days when he expects three mounts and winds up with one in the blazing heat in front of a Monday crowd of 873.  He knows he's only as good as the horses he rides.

 

"When you're an older rider, when you lose you get, 'Ah he's an older rider,'" Santagata said.  "But when you win, you're a crafty old veteran."

 

He smiled, his hands finally still for a moment.  "Everybody loves a winner, you know?"

Arlington's all-time leading rider, Fires tied Hawley at 6,449 victories when he guided Sixty Deelites to a 2-1/2-length win in the third race and moved into sole possession of ninth place with a win aboard Luga in race five.  Fires capped the three-win day with a victory aboard It's Never to Late in the eighth race.

 

Fires won the fifth and eighth race for the owner-trainer combination of Frank Calabrese and Wayne Catalano.

 

"Frank (Calabrese) has been good to me, and Wayne has helped out a lot, too, by putting me on so many good horses this season," Fires said.  "Because of them, I got here (to the latest mileston) a lot quicker than I thought I would."

 

Hawley was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1992. Fires was among the 2001 Hall of Fame class.  Thoroughbred Times Today.

Douglas, Arlington's defending champion from last season and the only jockey to have won four straight riding titles at the local oval, rode 34 winners from 108 mounts in May.

 

"I'm very happy.  Thank God we're off to such a good start," said Douglas after being recognized.  "I'd like to thank my agent (Dennis Cooper).  It's a team effort and we're a good team. Now we have to keep it going."  Arlington Park Communication Department

Biddynthechief went immediately to the lead under Radke and cruised to a comfortable win in the one-mile claiming race to secure the milestone victory.  The four-year-old filly is trained by owner Howard Belvoir.

 

"Howard got me started in California, so this was a great win for him," Radke said.  "I also want to thank my agent, Boone McCanna, who's booked me on about 870 of the wins."

 

A 36-year-old native of Cleveland, Radke won riding titles at Emerald Downs in 2002 and 2003 after beginning his career in 1998 in Northern California.  Thorougbred Times Today

The sponsorship has included the jockeys in the three races wearing the NetJets logo on their pants, for which they are paid.  The riders have then in turn donated the funds to charitable organizations. 

 

For the Belmont, a total of $135,000 will be donated to the Belmont Child Care Association and Backstretch Employee Team.  The amount comes from $7,500 payments by NetJets to nine of the ten riders in the Belmont and a matching $67,500 from NetJets chairman Richard Santulli, a Thoroughbred owner and breeder.

 

Kent Desormeaux who rides Triple Crown hopeful Big Brown, participated in the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (Gr. I) and Preakness Stakes (Gr. I) but is not participating in the Belmont.

 

A total of $500,000 was donated from the Derby to the NTRA Charities -- Permanently Disabled Jockeys Dund, which included a personal donation of $100,000 from Santulli and $100,000 from WinStar Farm owner Bill Casner as well as $200,000 from NetJets.

 

At the Preakness, $92,000 was divided between the Jockey Club Foundation and Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. The Blood-Horse

The Jockeys' Guild selected the Belmont Child Care Association, Inc., and the Backstretch Employee Service Team (BEST) as the beneficiaries of the Belmont Stakes promotion.  Belmont Child Care Association maintains Anna House which is located at Belmont Park and is the provider of early childhood education to the children of the families working at the NYRA tracks.  BEST provides multiple, on-site health and human services to support workers in the barn areas of Saratoga, Belmont Park and Aqueduct Racetracks.

 

This event marks the completion of a Triple Crown charitable collaboration between NetJets, Inc., the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, the Kentucky Derby jockeys and with the assistance of Churchill Downs.  Each rider in all three races wore the NetJets logo as part of this promotion.

 

At the Kentucky Derby, this collaboration, which also included individual personal donations of $100,000 from both Richard Santulli, chairman and CEO of NetJets, Inc., and Bill Casner, chairman of the Throroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, raised $500,000 to benefit the NTRA Charities- Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund.

 

At the Preakness, jockeys donated their NetJets sponsorship money amounting to $90,000 to The Jockey Club Foundation and the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. 

Heatseeker wore down pacesetter Surf Cat, gaining the advantage on the final turn and pulling away under urging from Bejarano to win by 5-1/4 lengths at Hollywood Park.  In the victory, Heatseeker's third in graded stakes company, he broke his own Hollywood Park record for 1 1/8 miles by completing the distance in 1:47.06.

 

Bejarano has won 12 graded stakes races in 2008, and ranks third among North American riders in purse earnings with $6,737,476.  He has guided 2007 Emirates Airline Breeders' Cup Distaff (GI) winner Ginger Punch to two stakes victories this year.

 

Bejarano, 25, began his riding career in his native Peru in 1999, winning the apprentice title at Hippodromo de Monterrico.  He moved to the United States in 2002, starting out at River Downs.

 

A Louisville resident, Bejarano has won riding titles at Keeneland Race Course, Churchill Downs, Turfway Park, and Ellis Park.  After moving to Southern California to ride for trainer Bobby Frankel in 2007, he also captured a riding title at Santa Anita.  Thoroughbred Times TODAY.

Elliott, 43,  was the most recent rider to pursue this elusive trophy.  Before him, 28 jockeys attempted to claim a Triple Crown as their own.  He was the 17th to have failed, one of four who are still riding to this day.  Kent Desormeaux, who will bid for the Triple Crown for trainer Rick Dutrow, Jr. aboard IEAH Stables' Big Brown in the June 7 Belmont, Victor Espinosa, and Patrick Valenzuela make up the distinguished quartet.

 

"This time of year brings it back and makes you think about it," said Elliott, who rode the John Servis-trained Smarty Jones for Roy Chapman's Someday Farm.  "I think the horse would have won if he'd run like he'd run before, like he ran in the Derby or Preakness.  But that day, that particular day, it wasn't meant to be."

 

The path that brings a rider to Belmont Park aboard a Triple Crown contender is a glorious one, paved by Classic scores that are satisfying on their own.  But the pursuit of greatness continues in the Belmont, and the loss of such a quest is one these riders never forget.

 

Jose Santos, 47, counts the loss of Funny Cide in the 2003 Belmont as a disappointment, but one for which he does feel responsible.  Aboard the Sackatoga Stables-owned and Barclay Tagg-trained gelding, the now-retired Hall of Fame jockey coasted in third.  He considered the effort a strong one from his mount, and was pleased with the results.  Still, that didn't ease the sting of defeat.

 

"It's very simple," he said.  "Jockeys are only going to spend 2-1/2 minutes racing on top of a horse.  When you win the Derby and Preakness you feel like a cinch to be the next Triple Crown winner, but after the Preakness a lot of times that can't happen.  Horses are very delicate and a lot of things happen between races; all the responsibility for those three weeks is on the trainer and the people who take care of the horse.  But people criticize the jockey who doesn't win the race, because you're supposed to win the race."

 

Apart from the time between efforts, another factor often hampers a rider's shot at the Triple Crown; by the Belmont, his contenders know the weaknesses of his mount.  They are gunning for him from the start, chasing as if a solid bull's eye has been painted on his back.  Race-riding techniques, while fair, can be brutal to a jockey's game.

 

"We started off with sprinter," Elliott remembered.  "He was very fast, and we said 'If we can trottle down the speed and get him to stretch out, we'll really have something here.'  He could have done it, but that day he wouldn't relax because he had a horse up beside him from the get-go, and how far can you keep going like that?  I just kept thinking, it would have been great, because it hasn't been done in a long time, it hasn't been done that many times."

 

"But that's the beauty of the races, the competition," said Santos.  "It's very difficult to win; the percentage speaks for itself.  Everybody is against the favorite.  You can be the winner by a nose or the loser by a nose.  Huge difference."

 

Another Hall of Fame retiree, 43-year-old Gary Stevens, calls the 1997 running of the Belmont Stakes one of the most difficult experiences from which to recover.  Aboard the Bob Baffert-trained Silver Charm, he lost by three-quarters of a length to Touch Gold, ridden by Chris McCarron.

 

"I've never recovered from Silver Charm, I really haven't,"  he said.  "I've been told, 'Oh you rode him perfectly, blah, blah, blah.' But I've always second-guessed the ride I gave him that day.  If I'd done things differently, would the end have been different?  It's something I'll have to live with.  I went from knowing I was going to win the Triple Crown at the sixteenth pole to knowing I was going to lose it 50 yards before the wire.  Talk about the highest of highs and lowest of lows -- try knowing you're going to get it and then seeing a shadow out of the corner of your eye and then it's over and you've lost it."

 

McCarron, 53, had missed a Triple Crown score himself with a self-described "scew-up," when he rode Dorothy and Pamela Scharbauer's Alysheba to a poorly-planned fourth place finish for trainer Jack Van Berg in the 1987 Belmont.

 

It feels greedy to describe it as the lowest feeling you can possibly have, considering what you've accomplished up to that point," McCarron said.  But put it this way; I start out at ground level and win the Derby, so I'm at 10,000 feet.  I win the Preakness, and I'm at 20,000 feet.  Now I'm going to the Belmont and I'm looking at Mount Everest -- I'll have scaled the highest mountain in the world if I win.  But I don't.  And all of the sudden I'm right back to ground zero, square one, so I have to swallow it all and convince myself that, you know what, it's part of the game.  In horse racing, you win some and lose alot."

 

The pressue of losing such a bid is heavy, and the circumstances can be overwhelmingly damning for a rider who feels the pressure of this industry's yearning for a Triple Crown winner.

 

"It starts to build up when you go into the Derby," Elliott said.  "I guess I got used to it a little bit -- but it never really goes away after that -- but things happen so fast.  You win the Derby and now, bam! You're going to try to win the Preakness.  And you win the Preakness and bam! It's there again going to the Belmont."

 

"It's an exciting time, but mentally draining," Stevens said.  "That doesn't come so much from the attention, but from feeling responsible to the sport."

 

Following a 1999 Triple Crown bid, lost when Bob and Beverly Lewis' Charismatic broke down in the Belmont stretch, the late Chris Antley left the scene brokenhearted -- and those who knew him best believe that feeling contributed to the jockey's tragic death the next year.

 

"I honestly think in hindsight that he carried a lot weight on his shoulders, not only for the horse and the Lewis family and (trainer D. Wayne) Lukas, but for the whole industry," said Ron Anderson, Antley's former agent.  "He was trying to get the Triple Crown this sport needed."

 

"The most difficult part in the aftermath is the huge letdown," said McCarron.  "Before that, time flies by and it seems like the races are right on top of each other.  You win the Derby and the Preakness and you're being pulled in every possible direction.  You have so many people saying 'You're gonna get it, you're gonna win the Triple Crown, he won the Preakness so easy, you can't miss...' The emotional aspect is overwhelming."

 

Desormeaux, 38, has already experienced that rush and subsequent letdown.  Aboard Mike Pegram's Real Quiet in 1998, he lost the Belmont in the last jump.  He also second-guessed in the aftermath, wondering if he made his move too soon.  But trainer Bob Baffert would have none of it, telling his rider to remember the positive build-up and not look back.

 

Win, lose, or draw, most of the riders who have come so close to greatness agree on one thing -- the sweetness of the journey and the chance of a lifetime is worth the pain of the often-suffered loss.

 

"Going to the Triple Crown after winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness is a beautiful ride," said Santos.  And Elliott summed it up best, with the optimistic attitude of one whose career reached heights he could only dream of.

 

"You know, 'Smarty' was the best horse I'd ever ridden," he said.  "I said at one point, 'If I could win the Arkansas Derby on this horse, I'd be happy.'  Then we went to the Kentucky Derby, and sure, I was on the best horse, but the best horse doesn't have to win.  When we went on to win the Preakness and it looked like we had a great chance to win the Triple Crown but it didn't happen, sure, that was disappointing.  But you have to realize what a great run I had.  I won the Kentucky Derby.  I won the Preakness.  And nobody can ever take that away from me."  Claire Novak/The Blood-Horse

Other officers elected at the Board's meeting include Gino Lavo as treasurer and Steve Gigliotti as its secretary.  California attorney Barry Broad has been retained as the Disabled Jockeys' Endowment Board's counsel.

 

Additionally, Tomey Jean Swan has resigned from the Board and has been replaced by Jack Fires, who was previously named an ex-officio member of the Board.

 

"We plan to work towards a unified process with the Permanently Disabled Jockeys' Fund to develop the widest possible support for permanently disabled jockeys," said the newly elected LaSala.  "The Board would like to thank Tomey Jean Swan for her past service on behalf of disabled jockeys.  We look forward to her continued support as a member of the horse-racing community."

 

The nine-member Board is now compprised of the following members -- Don Farrar, Jack Fires, Steve Gigliotti, Nancy LaSala, Gina Lavo, Terry Meyocks, Laffit Pincay, Jr., Richard Shapiro and John Velazquez.

 

Founded in 2002, the Disabled Jockeys' Endowment seeks to raise enough money to provide self-sustaining aid to disabled riders across the country from the annual income generated by the principal.

"It felt great," he said yesterday at Suffolk Downs after coming in a close fourth riding Out of Answers.  "When the gate opens, you get a rush you can't believe.  It keeps you young."

 

He didn't set a record, but they'll be more days and more races.  He's already one of the oldest, if not the oldest, jockey who actively rides.

 

"If it isn't today, it will be next week," quipped the 116-pound, 5-feet 2-inch tall Winthrop resident.

 

Yesterday was Amonte's first race since August when he was in a car crash that kept him out of competition for eight months.  In September 2005, one day shy of his 70th birthday, he won at the the Three County Fair in Northampton, making him the oldest winning jockey in America.

 

"That was when I was 69," he said.  "I was only a kid then."

 

Amonte, a father of seven and grandfather of 11, has been a jockey since the age of 16, when he turned to horses as a way to escape Brooklyn, New York street life.

 

"It just gets in your blood," he said.  "Sometimes it makes you know you are alive and are part of something."

 

Osvaldo Rivera, who trains Out of Answers, said some trainers discount Amonte, but not him.  He sees Amonte every morning at the track.

 

"He does just as good a job as anybody else," he said.  "He's got a young heart."

 

Yesterday, Amonte's youngest competitor was 25.  The oldest was 43.

 

Amonte's daughter, Doreen Araujo, 32, said it's not his quest to break records that keeps him riding.

 

"He has a love for sport," said Araujo.  "Not only does he enjoy racing, but he enjoys being with the horses.  He's living out his dream."  Jessica Fargen/Boston Herald