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 The Sport of Kings Jockeys making a living in high-stakes sport
Posted: Tuesday June 08, 1999 06:29 PM
ATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- Horse racing is referred to as the Sport of Kings, and it may be the most turbulent world in professional sports. And the life of a jockey is not always a glorious Run for the Roses. Just ask some of the jockeys who try to make a living from it. Pat Day: "There's always the pressure to produce, to win. It's a high-stress situation and it's year-round." Chris Antley: "The highs are tremendous, and the lows are tremendous also." Shane Sellers: "The pressure kills you." This is a profession that's an intense mix of high-stakes, high-speed competition, weight control battles and a place where drugs and alcohol often provide the only solace. "You have to keep winning," says Antley, the 1999 Kentucky Derby and Preakeness Stakes winner. "You have to stay light. You have to do all these things, even when you don't win, even when things don't go right. There's a lot of pressures involved, and only the strong survive in this game. It's a game of 'What have you done for me lately,' like in the last seven minutes."
In a year-round sport where you have to be a star every day, the pressure is continual, beginning at first light and then multiplied as jockeys routinely ride as many as eight races on a card. "Eight times today, I have to deal with the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat," says Day who finished second in last year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness. "And within just a few moments, I have to compose myself, get prepared and go back out and do it again. All of that's like a roller-coaster ride." A jockey's stressful ride is compounded by the constant concern over making weight. That's issue drove Ronnie Ebie, now a jockey's agent out of the saddle after eight years of torture. "I think it made me walk around in imbalance. I mean my nervous system was always on edge," he says. "I was always angry, I was always weak and always tired." Bulimia and anorexia are common occupational hazards for athletes who spend time in the hot box trying to shed pounds off their 114-pound frames. Pounds that they can't spare. "We're taking off weight that we don't have to take off," Sellers said. "There's nothing. We're almost one- percent body fat." And in order to keep that weight off, Sellers says some jockeys go to extremes just to stay legal. "I mean, I myself heaved for 17 years. We're not very healthy athletes," he says "But that's the only way to keep your weight down. Some riders go through Lasix (anti-bleeding dieretic). From Lasix they go to diet pills. When you start getting into amphetamines and diet pills to hold your weight down, then that leads to other things. In many cases, drugs and alcohol are the elixers riders reach for to cope regardless of the career Risks. Three-time Eclipse Award winner JerryBailey, stopped drinking in 1989, the same year Pat Valenzuela was suspended for testing positive for cocaine only five months after riding Sunday Silence to victory in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Day battled cocaine and alcohol adiction before winning eight Triple Crown races. And Antley, now one win away from the Triple Crown, once forfeited his license because of drug use. "Possibly there's a large segment of society that faces basically the same kind of pressures, but maybe the availability of drugs and alcohol, we use that as an excuse," Day said. "We need an outlet, we need something to calm us down. We have a great way of validating our actions, regardless of whether they're right, wrong or indifferent." Kent Desormeaux, 1998's Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner says the pressure to win can force a jockey to seek an escape mode. "I think they do that probably looking for a place to hide," he says. "I know even myself, when you have a horrible day. It's tough not the first thing you want to do is go out and have a beer or whatever. Someone wants to hide, I think, to remove themselves from the stressful situation that they're in." Other stress that pervades a jockey's life can stem from personal insecurity created by their small statures. "Being small in size wasn't always something I looked at as a blessing" says Day who is 4-foot-11, 100 pounds. "When I was in high school, I wanted to be the tall, dark, handsome football player type, and I didn't fit the bill in any of those." The path to a healthy, social development is further hampered by the fact that many jockey's left home in their mid-teens to begin riding careers. Gary Stevens, the 1997 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner knows about that from personal experience. "There's no other sport in the world, I don't think, where a 16-year-old kid is expected to come into the locker room, into a man's world, and he's gonna be treated as a man because there's too much on the line." While racing history is on the line Saturday, the Belmont Stakes is just one race at one track on one day. The struggle to survive the myriad pressures of their profession is a perpetually huge chore for some of sports' most overlooked athletes.
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