After the Fall, Velazquez Is Back in the Saddle

ELMONT, N.Y., June 8 -- The fall couldn't have been more frightening when jockey John Velazquez crossed the finish line first in the Forerunner Stakes on April 20 at Keeneland, then disappeared as his mount, Up an Octave, broke a front leg and rolled over on top of him.

As the horse thrashed before being euthanized on the track, Velazquez, the leading rider in the country, lay motionless on the turf course.

"It was a horrific spill," remembered trainer Todd Pletcher, who conditioned Up an Octave and has teamed with Velazquez for years to form one of the most dynamic trainer-jockey tandems in racing. "It looked bad. You could have projected anything might have happened to him."

Velazquez, 34, suffered a cracked right shoulder blade, a briefly collapsed lung, bruised ribs and ligament damage. Considering he had been underneath a horse weighing more than 1,000 pounds, the 109-pound jockey was considered lucky to not have died. Doctors expected a long convalescence, at least three months, but Velazquez had other ideas, and on Saturday he will ride Bluegrass Cat as the favorite in the $1 million Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown.

While he admits to not being fully healed, Velazquez returned to racing June 2, winning with his first mount back at Belmont Park, favorite Mr Sam I Am, a 3-year-old gelding trained by Pletcher. The jockey appeared remarkably fit on the backstretch at Pimlico the week of the Preakness Stakes, and it looked obvious he would attempt to regain his mount on Bluegrass Cat in time for the Belmont.

The colt, one of the top horses of his generation, finished second to Barbaro in the Kentucky Derby with replacement jockey Ramon Dominguez. In the meantime, Pletcher recruited California-based Garrett Gomez to fill in as his first-call jockey while Velazquez recovered, and the rising star made the most of the opportunity, winning eight stakes races for the trainer in little more than a month.

"It was hard," Velazquez said of watching other riders take his mounts to the winners circle. "But then again, I was not feeling very good at all. And so I was not going to put myself out there when I'm not feeling very good and unable to compete. I'm very realistic. I couldn't do it."

Velazquez never lost consciousness during the accident and remembers it with agonizing clarity.

"I've got to say that the way the horse fell on my back, it felt like he broke me in half, and the sound was very ugly," he said. "The next thing was I couldn't catch my breath. Now I'm talking to myself, 'Just relax and relax and try to breathe slowly.' You've got that feeling you're going to pass out. You've got that heat going through your body and going all the way through your head. And I'm just talking to myself, 'Okay, relax; relax.' "

For the first two weeks after the fall, Velazquez did nothing.

"I couldn't move; I couldn't even sneeze," he said. "Basically, it was lying down and sitting in the chair and getting a lot of rubdowns from my wife."

But while Velazquez was lying down, Gomez and Dominguez were rising up. Velazquez is, at this point in his career, widely considered the best jockey in the country. He has won countless stakes races and riding titles and last year his mounts earned a record $162.7 million. He has received the Eclipse Award as top jockey in the country the past two years. Others out there want his spot.

Ron Anderson, who recently became jockey agent for Gomez after the retirement of Hall of Fame rider Jerry Bailey, said there is a telling saying in the sport of racing: "Your friends in this business root for you to die.

"It's a totem pole business," he said. "If you're doing good, and you're up on the totem pole, somebody behind you is always trying to knock you off the pole and move up a wrung. It's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's the truth."

Anderson said Velazquez is one of the people no one in racing dislikes.

"It would be difficult to find someone not rooting for him," he said. "He's just different; a really nice kid."

Still, Velazquez wanted to get back to work as quickly as possible. Winning the Belmont Stakes would make a strong statement as to his still being No. 1.

Velazquez has ridden in the race nine times and never won. He's finished in last place the past two years and fifth of six in 2003. He likes the idea that he has come back from a severe injury in time to ride the favorite and perhaps win the race called "The Test of the Champion" for the first time.

"This definitely is the best chance [I've had] going into the Belmont," he said. "Hopefully, he runs the way we think he's going to, the way I expect him to run."