Jockey Troy Stillwell is back at Emerald Downs 19 years after he left horse racing

AUBURN — Troy Stillwell couldn't take the punishment anymore. The every-day worry about his weight. The hours in the hot box. The tedious calorie counting that made him feel like a miser counting his money.

He didn't have the discipline to go on. He loved his sport, but he hated the toll it was taking on him.

So 19 years ago, Stillwell finished second in a race at Portland Meadows, got off his mount and left the track, he thought, for good.

"I knew I was done," he said, sitting in the cafeteria before Sunday's race card at Emerald Downs. "I couldn't keep my weight down. I wasn't paying attention and I got tired of fighting my weight."

Stillwell retired, joined his father's insurance business in Hoquiam, and for 19 years he never watched a horse race. He said watching was too painful.

Instead, Stillwell rekindled his love affair with food and ballooned to 189 pounds.

"I was huge," he said.

That's when he had one of those life-changing moments, the kind of event that scared him back into shape and scared him all the way back to the racetrack.

He was finishing a day of hound hunting in Oregon and was climbing out of a steep canyon. By the time he got to his truck, he couldn't breathe.

His heart was crashing against his chest. He thought he was having a heart attack. For a half-hour he rested on his back by the side of his truck, in the middle of nowhere, telling himself, "I've had enough of this. I've got to start exercising," as his heart's rhythm finally returned to normal.

That was four years ago.

Now Stillwell, 44, is riding again. He weighs a consistent 119 pounds.

"I should have been on 'The Biggest Loser,' " Stillwell says referring to the NBC reality show.

The biggest loser is riding and winning again.

Two months into the meet, he is tied for fifth in the jockey standings at Emerald Downs with 16 wins. He was named Jockey of the Week in the meet's third week.

Since his return, Stillwell has won 25 of 80 races for trainer Charles Essex and has finished in the money in 62 percent of his races for Essex.

"He's a good, hard worker and I like the way he settles horses," Essex said. "We work well together. He does a lot of work in the morning with me and we talk a lot about what he sees with my horses. Or he'll call me at night and tell me some things he sees on replays. It just seems like he keeps getting better and better."

Stillwell started the comeback in 2007, riding in the bush tracks in Oregon. He had seen a documentary on Seabiscuit and told himself, "I need to ride."

He joined the YMCA and ran the treadmill 4 miles a day. He ate only vegetables and lean meat and got his weight down to 142. He won the first race he rode in Tillamook. That day he won three of the five races he entered and felt the kind of blood rush he hadn't felt in almost two decades.

"I didn't know if I could be disciplined enough to come back," he said. "I always thought about riding again. I was aching to do it for 19 years, but I didn't think it was possible. I never did. I kept pushing the idea away like it was a bad habit.

"My father died in '07 and I think that motivated me to get back. My dad was my best friend, I did everything with my dad, and I think working toward coming back helped me forget about his death. I needed some way out."

This second coming isn't some kind of a midlife lark. Stillwell works with the rate of a hungry apprentice.

"Maybe the 19 years I was away gave me more appreciation for it," he said. "I'm able to do it again and, yeah, I'm surprised at how well I'm doing. It's tough here and I didn't think I could ever break into this place. I didn't think I'd ever have a chance."

Even now that he's back, Stillwell looks around the jockeys' room and sees Ricky Frazier, Gallyn Mitchell and Juan Gutierrez and wonders what he's doing in such company.

"I was scared when I first walked in here," he said. "I was nervous. I was a nobody. I'm still a nobody. But I was a nobody-nobody then."

Nineteen years after he quit, Troy Stillwell is on his way to becoming a somebody. He's getting a second chance to live the life he's always wanted. His goal is to stay around another three or four years, long enough that he can race against his son Tucker, who is 14.

"I want to race him and I want to beat him," dad says smiling.

Bet on it.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists