Horse Racing
The life of a jockey is thrills and spills

By Scott Hanson
Seattle Times staff

	BRIAN KERSEY / AP Gary Stevens nearly died in August during this fall in the Arlington Million. But, like so many jockeys, he won't let a few broken bones force him to quit the sport he loves.
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Related stories Telepathy is most useful skill when riding a horse Like salesmen, jockeys work on commission

Bryson Cooper can't remember how many bones he has broken.

He figures at least 30. He is sure about the 19 operations, and just as sure he would do it all over again.

"I can't think of a better feeling in the world," said Cooper, 52, who won the 1977 Longacres Mile aboard Theologist. "The crowd is screaming, people shouting, 'Nice ride!' I don't know if there is anything that can top that."

Riders accept injury as a given and are willing to take extreme measures to maintain often unhealthy weights — all for the rush of riding.

Vicky Baze, 39, was one of the area's most successful jockeys in the 1980s and '90s, when she rode as Vicky Aragon. Now married to longtime jockey Gary Baze, she rode 1,772 winners, third most nationally for a female jockey.

The pain from two bulging disks in her neck became so severe that she had to retire after the 2001 season. Still, the fire to ride burns.

"Not a day goes by where I don't think about riding again," said Baze, who works as an agent for her husband. "I'd be tickled to death just to be able to ride one or two races a day."

Cooper and Baze were lucky in one respect. They were among the few who didn't have to worry much about weight — a daily struggle for many jockeys.

For Vann Belvoir, who holds the season riding record at Emerald Downs, the struggle became too much.

Belvoir, a trainer at Turf Paradise in Phoenix, is a fit 160 to 165 pounds. Around the barn, they tease him, saying he should play linebacker for the Arizona Cardinals.

During his riding days, he was consumed with keeping his weight almost 50 pounds lower. He had 148 victories during Emerald Downs' inaugural season in 1996, but it came at a heavy price.

"I was pulling (losing) five to seven pounds a day," Belvoir said. "You're taking a 5-foot-7 to 5-8 body that is supposed to weigh 160, and making it weigh 115 to 117. That's not easy. I was always dehydrated. You're hardly eating anything and spending hours in the hot box (sauna). Twice, I was hospitalized with dehydration and almost died. I had, like, mini-seizures."

Belvoir reluctantly quit riding after the 1996 season.

"I didn't want to admit to myself that I was done," he said. "I still have my tack. If there are races for jockeys who weigh 150, I am in."

A dangerous game

A University of North Carolina study concluded what any jockey could tell you: Riding is a dangerous sport.

"It's not a matter of if you are going to get hurt; it's a matter of when," said Gallyn Mitchell, Emerald Downs' all-time leading jockey in wins and earnings. "The odds are against you. If you ride enough, it's going to happen. If someone says they haven't been hurt, it's because they haven't ridden very much."

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES After 19 operations, Bryson Cooper quit racing, but helps his wife, Kay, right, train horses.

The North Carolina study found that, from 1993 to 1996, 6,545 injuries required treatment among about 2,700 licensed jockeys at 114 racetracks in the United States.

"It's like riding in L.A. traffic during rush hour, but the 1,200-pound animals don't always go where you want them to," Mitchell said.

When half-ton animals are running up to 40 mph, any change in speed or direction can turn riders into human projectiles, often with tragic results.

Since 1940, 144 jockeys have died in North America, according to the Jockeys' Guild.

The most recent was two months ago at Turfway Park in Florence, Ky. Michael Rowland was two wins away from 4,000 career victories. Rowland's horse was leading when it broke its leg in the first turn. Rowland was thrown to the ground and trampled. After five nights in intensive care, he died.

Many jockey injuries occur when a horse gets hurt during a race. Jockeys also can get jostled in the starting gate or get hurt when their horse clips heels with another horse.

Sometimes, it's just bad luck.

Noel Barker was fatally thrown in Australia in 1993 after a seagull flew in front of his mount, Father Time, causing the horse to rear.

Jockeys know the danger, but they don't like to talk about it. They know accidents — which they call "spills" — are inevitable, but that doesn't keep them from doing what they love.

"I had countless spills," Vicky Baze said. "Jockeys try not to remember them. I didn't care about them, or worry about them. I just wanted to get back out and ride."

Which is what she will do again if her neck allows.

Coming back from a spill takes courage. Baze said she has seen jockeys ride scared after an injury. Mitchell said that can be dangerous.

"You just have to get back on as soon as possible," Mitchell said. "You can't be worried or tentative. If you ride scared or tentative, that is when you or others around you are going to get hurt."

Being on a horse can be dangerous whether it's a workout, a gallop or a race.

Jennifer Whitaker knows this well. She was an exercise rider for 11 years before beginning her racing career in 2000 at Emerald Downs.

"It's all dangerous," said Whitaker, who broke her femur twice as an exercise rider.

Her sister, Darline, broke her neck while galloping a horse at Hollywood Park in the mid-1980s. She is paraplegic.

"My sister really encourages me to ride," Whitaker said. "My sister says if she could, she would ride again in a second."

During Whitaker's first season, she broke her collarbone and tore cartilage in her ribs.

"It's just the price you pay to do what you love," said Whitaker, who also has arthritis and tendinitis in her hands.

One man's long ride

	ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Gallyn Mitchell, mounted at right, says it's only a matter of time before a jockey gets hurt. "The odds are against you," he says. "If you ride enough, it's going to happen."

Cooper is a case study in resilience.

He retired at age 50, after one final ride on Father's Day 2002. He had sat out the 2001 season with a knee injury and was hoping to make a comeback.

"It just didn't feel right," said Cooper, who began his career as jockey in 1970. "So I decided I might as well stop riding. I still have the desire to ride. I just didn't feel I could do my best anymore with my injuries and age."

Cooper still gallops horses for his wife, trainer Kay Penney Cooper. Two months ago, he was taking his horse off the track when a spooked horse scared the one he was on.

"My horse reared up in self-defense and fell over on top of me," he said.

The damage to Cooper: 13 broken ribs, broken right collarbone, broken left shinbone, broken nose, chipped ankle and collapsed lung.

"I was a little sore," deadpanned Cooper.

He plans to resume galloping horses as soon as the screws are taken out of his shoulder.

"If it was up to me, I would have been riding yesterday," Cooper said. "I am sure I will be back faster than the doctors would like. It's what I've done all of my life. I am not going to stop."

No one who knows him doubts that.

A couple of decades ago, he took a spill during a race in Yakima. He quickly lifted himself up, not knowing there was a horse trailing the field coming right at him.

"I saw the horse just in time to put my hands in front of my face, or else I would have been done for," Cooper said.

The result: a broken wrist and an elbow that was shattered in four places.

Pins were inserted in the elbow, but the doctor told him he wouldn't ride again because he would never straighten his arm. Cooper bought a small dumbbell and spent hours each day doing curls until he could straighten his arm.

"The doctor was amazed," Cooper said.

He was no less amazing in another comeback. It was around 1982 at Playfair in Spokane. He was on the lead horse entering the turn when his horse broke down, knocking him off.

"Just about every horse in the field had a shot at me," Cooper said.

Fortunately, he was dragged off into the infield before the horses came around. He knew his wrist was broken, but, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he felt a severe burning in his stomach.

"That meant I had internal bleeding," Cooper said. "The sirens came on, and they rushed me to the hospital as fast as they could."

When Cooper's wife arrived at the hospital, she saw a priest administering last rites. Cooper's small intestine had been crushed into his spine.

"They took out a foot and a half of small intestines," Cooper said.

Even that didn't keep him away from racing.

"To be honest, the injuries never affected me," he said. "I raced fearlessly. Maybe that is part of the reason I had so many injuries, because I took some chances, but I also think I won a lot of races because of that."

And if he could, he would still be trying to win races.

"I miss racing a lot," he said. "Not a day goes by where I don't think about it."

The weight game

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Jennifer Whitaker, working out Sugar Sleet recently, broke her collarbone and tore rib cartilage in her first season of racing (2000). "It's just the price you pay to do what you love," Whitaker says.

Vann Belvoir was almost always thirsty.

"I remember finishing riding a race and really wanting a soda," he said. "I mean, I really wanted one. So, I drank one. But I had to go back in the hot box for another hour to lose the pound I had gained."

It had not started like this. He started riding in 1989, and he left Kentwood High School after his sophomore year. He was a state runner-up in wrestling at 101 pounds, but he continued to grow.

Soon, keeping his weight at around 115 pounds was nearly impossible. He was dominating the competition at Emerald Downs in 1996, but the job was no longer much fun.

"It began to feel like my job was pulling weight, and not riding," Belvoir said. "I did it all: hours in the hot box, running in plastic and taking Lasix."

Lasix is used to treat horses who bleed, but it's also a diuretic.

It is also no secret in the business that many jockeys intentionally vomit.

"We call that flipping," Belvoir said. "Yeah, I was flipping until about my final two years."

But Belvoir began worrying about his long-term health. In addition to being hospitalized twice, he was having a hard time sleeping.

"My heart would beat real fast," he said. "I would need to have some water, but then I would have to lose more weight the next day. It got real difficult."

For Belvoir, there was a happy ending. After his 148 victories at Emerald Downs in 1996, he became a trainer and was the leading trainer during the Emerald Downs winter meet in 1996-97.

Randy Romero wasn't as lucky. His plight has put the spotlight on the dangers of losing weight each day and staying unnaturally thin. One of the nation's best jockeys from 1976 to 1999, Romero needs a kidney and liver transplant from the effects of years of reducing weight.

Romero has admitted that he allowed himself to retain just two meals a week. The rest he flipped.

In 1983, Romero rubbed his body with alcohol and oil so he would sweat more profusely in the hot box at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark. He accidentally rubbed against one of the bulbs and caught fire, suffering second- and third-degree burns over more than 60 percent of his body.

Romero and others in the industry are pushing for an increase in racing's scale of weights, which determines how much a horse carries based on age, sex and race distance. In most cases, a jockey must weigh in at 115 pounds or less to get mounts. The scale has been essentially unchanged for about 100 years.

"We really need to change the scale of weights," said longtime trainer Howard Belvoir, Vann's father. "People have gotten bigger; the horses have gotten bigger. The only thing that hasn't gotten bigger is the jockeys."

Trainer Tim McCanna is concerned that raising the scale of weights could make it harder on the horses. However, McCanna often sees the negative side of reducing.

"It's a real problem," said McCanna, leading trainer at Emerald Downs the past three years. "I used to live with a guy who would (lose) seven pounds a day. He would cramp up bad, he would get so dehydrated. Some of them don't eat for a day or two at a time. A lot of them are bulimic, but you've also got to admire them for wanting it so badly. And often, they are some of the best riders."

McCanna said it's easy to tell when a rider has gone too far.

"I have had riders that, as soon as they got off the horse, they just fell to the ground because they were so weak and dehydrated," he said.

For the thrill of it

So, what makes riding worth it? Jockeys, even the talkative ones, struggle for words when trying to describe their passion.

"It's really an indescribable feeling," Mitchell said. "It's a thrill. It's an excitement that is hard to put into words."

Whitaker wasn't able to do much better.

"People ask me what it's like, but it's something you really can't explain," said Whitaker. "Riding is a great rush. It's just this incredible feeling you get, especially if you know you have a chance to win. It's something we love to do."

Gary Stevens understands the excitement. The former Longacres riding champion and four-time Kentucky Derby winner could have parlayed his role in the movie "Seabiscuit" into a full-time acting job. But he isn't ready to give up his sport, not even after he nearly died in August during an ugly spill in the nationally televised Arlington Million outside Chicago.

"The money doesn't hurt, but I'm not doing it for the money anymore," he told Times columnist Steve Kelley in February. "I love what I'm doing."

It's the same reason Vicky Baze would like to ride again.

"Speaking for Gary (Baze) and I, it's for the love of the sport," she said. "We love horses and we love riding. It's in our blood."

Scott Hanson: 206-464-2943 or shanson@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company