Column: John Velazquez returns to the Breeders’ Cup after bad spill

It would be understandable were John Velazquez less than giddy about his trip from New York for this weekend’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita.

He is a Hall of Fame jockey. About a year ago, he passed Pat Day in career winnings, topping Day’s $297-million mark. Earlier in 2013, he won his 5,000th race. This year, he became the first jockey to top $300 million in winnings.

He will turn 43 next month. The road from his native Puerto Rico to saddle stardom has been paved with success. He is now at a point in his career where it becomes a collection of milestones.

But there is always the downside of danger for these talented small men such as Velazquez, who climb aboard 1,000-pound thoroughbreds and ride in tight packs going 40 mph. They can, and usually do several times along the way, get hurt badly.

Such was the case with Velazquez last year, when he was turning for home at Santa Anita aboard Bob Baffert’s Secret Compass in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, a $2-million race.

At full speed, in tight quarters, Secret Compass fractured a bone in her front leg and collapsed. Velazquez was flung to the ground and immediately trampled by at least one of the trailing fillies.

“It happens so fast, and you are kind of stunned,� Velazquez says. “Everybody goes by you and you are just kind of there. My first concern was my knee. It really hurt. Then I looked at my left arm and it was kind of twisted. I grabbed it and it seemed OK, but numb. My stomach was hurting, I was out of breath and I thought I probably hurt some ribs.

“At this point, you teach yourself to try and relax. I talked to myself, checking out everything to see what was wrong.�

By then, he says, the paramedics were there and talking to him. He remembers asking for help to get up and wanting to walk to the ambulance, to check out his sore knee. He remembers taking a few steps and telling medical personnel he didn’t think he could make it, that he was blacking out.

Soon, he was on a stretcher, probably slipping into shock, and, in minutes, in the quality hands of doctors and nurses at Huntington Memorial Hospital. It had been determined that he had a great deal of internal bleeding and that his spleen would have to be removed.

“I remember asking the doctor not to make a big incision,� Velazquez says.

He awoke with a scar stretching from his breast bone to below his belly button.

Had he not been handled quickly and correctly by medical personnel, they could very well be planning a moment of silence for him this year, right after the national anthem that will open this two-day event Friday.

It was both an equine tragedy and a human close call. Secret Compass was euthanized. Velazquez was in the hospital for a week and in a Southern California hotel for another week before he was able to fly home back East.

“So many people were so nice to me,� he says now. “The doctors, the nurses. Bob and Jill Baffert were at the hospital and trying to get me to stay at their house when I was discharged from the hospital. I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to put them through that, and you kind of want your own privacy when you are hurt like that.�

Also with him during the ordeal was his wife, Leona, and his jockey agent, the legendary former rider, Angel Cordero Jr., who also had had his spleen removed after a riding accident.

“His scar is uglier than mine,� Velazquez says.

Velazquez didn’t race again until late January at Gulfstream Park in Florida, and that wasn’t easy.

“I was fine on the horse,� he says. “I think I rode two that day, and I was plenty tired that night. But I had worked hard to get myself fit.�

Loss of a spleen can affect the immune system and the ability to gain weight, the latter a strange problem for a jockey. Hard work is needed to achieve maximum endurance levels, to go quickly from one race to the next.

“You lose so much muscle,� Velazquez says.

That brings us to this weekend at the Great Race Place.

Velazquez will ride in all 13 Breeders’ Cup races — four Friday and nine Saturday. Talk about endurance. Officials said Thursday the last jockey to ride a full slate of Breeders’ Cup races was Jerry Bailey in 1998 and 1999.

Velazquez laughs about Cordero booking him to the hilt.

“Thank you very much, Angel,� he says.

He might not even know that Cordero made it 14 rides, not 13, by also putting him aboard Ring Weekend in the fourth race on the extended Friday card. That’s a pre-Breeders’ Cup race called the Twilight Derby.

Velazquez will enter the weekend with the most Breeders’ Cup rides of any jockey, 126. If all goes according to plan, he will depart with a likely untouchable 139. Retired legends such as Day with 117 and Bailey with 102 won’t catch him.

Perhaps the only one who could, were he to hire a sadistic agent like Cordero, would be Mike Smith, who leads in Breeders’ Cup victories with 20, eight ahead of fourth-place Velazquez’s 12.

Smith is 49. Velazquez has said he was looking at 45 as a good retirement target. Now, with Smith riding so well and continuing to get quality rides, Velazquez says he is inspired.

“I guess I’ll keep doing this for a while,� he says.

No spleen, but still plenty of spine.

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