By T. D. Thornton
Jockey Javier Castellano hit the 5,000 career win mark on Saturday at Belmont Park. Considering his 21-year career has been an upward arc of accomplishment, the milestone numbers are probably starting to blur for the 41-year-old native of Venezuela who comes from a family of race riders and is widely considered a solid citizen of the sport.
The four-time Eclipse Award winner for Outstanding Jockey and record-setter for earnings in a year ($28.1 million in 2015) has now exceeded $20 million in purses for seven consecutive years. When Castellano was voted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 2017, the prevailing sentiment was that another plaque might someday be needed to properly list all his future accomplishments.
Like most riders though, Castellano's first career victory came under rather ordinary circumstances in a nondescript race: On July 31, 1997, in the irons for just his second United States mount, Castellano guided maiden-claimer Phone Man (Caller I.D.) to a stalking half-length win in the third race at Calder Race Course.
Yet the chart of that race reveals a historical oddity you wouldn't expect to see in a ho-hum Thursday race at Calder in the middle of summer: That seven-horse field with a $6,300 purse for bottom-level maidens featured three future Hall-of-Fame jockeys.
The other two? Veteran Randy Romero, who at the time was winding down a 26-year career prior to a 2010 Hall of Fame induction, and up-and-coming Ramon Dominguez, then in his second year of riding before blasting off on his own spree of dominance that culminated with a 2016 Hall of Fame induction.
Both Romero and Dominguez paid hefty physical tolls that too often are the hallmarks of their profession.
Romero suffered burns over two-thirds of his body in a jockeys' room sauna fire in 1983, but was able to return to top form as the Breeders' Cup-winning jockey aboard both Go for Wand and Personal Ensign, eventually ending his career in 1999 with 4,294 wins. Ill health effects from a lifetime of having to purge weight have followed him into retirement though, and Romero has endured severe kidney and liver complications for decades. He has been outspoken about raising the minimum weight requirements for jockeys.
Dominguez, a winner of 4,985 career races, three consecutive Eclipse Awards for Outstanding Jockey, and a total of 20 individual meet riding titles at New York Racing Association tracks, had his career ut short in its prime when he suffered a traumatic brain injury in an Aqueduct Racetrack spill in January 2013. Since announcing his retirement later that year, Dominguez has also been an impassioned advocate on behalf of greater safety for jockeys.
Running into retirement…
Although his career on horseback is over, Dominguez continues to make headlines winning races. He was profiled in the September issue of Runner's World for his successful transition to road racing. As a jockey, Dominguez ran to maintain weight, but said he didn't particularly like it.
“After my retirement, I was just able to enjoy it,” Dominguez told Runner's World, noting that he now looks forward to training 25 miles a week with a running club. “And then I got to a point where I felt like I was fit enough to take a look into [road] racing, because racing is one of the things you miss when you're a retired professional athlete. So I felt that this could, in some way, bring back that competitive element.”
According to Runner's World, Dominguez won the first 5K he entered with a time of 19:15. He also recently completed the Run for the Horses 5K charity race to benefit Thoroughbreds in Saratoga Springs in an impressive 18:38.
“In both running and horse racing, you prepare physically up to a point that's the optimal level for you, but then the biggest obstacle to overcome is really yourself,” Dominguez said in the article. “You're like, 'I don't know if I can do this,' and your mind starts playing tricks on you. Having been an athlete for almost 20 years, it's definitely a big advantage in this learning curve I'm going through [with running] because some of the things I'm experiencing, I've already been through even if it is in a different sport.”
Spectacular crash, Safe Outcome
The fence-crashing stretch run of Friday's GIII Pin Oak Valley View S. at Keeneland Race Course is an example of a horse losing her chance to win due to a bizarre happenstance. But it also represents a potential tragedy averted because Keeneland two years ago invested in a flexible inner turf rail that is designed to absorb impact when hit by a horse and/or jockey.
'TDN Rising Star' Daddy Is a Legend (Scat Daddy) slipped through a tight gap on the inside in the final furlong of Friday's feature and appeared to have every chance to win the race when she ducked to the left and careened through the inner rail into the infield as the fence supports popped out and the horizontal sections of the rail collapsed inward in domino fashion.
Daddy Is a Legend did not fall and jockey Manny Franco was able to pull her up in the infield adjacent to the stretch. The filly was walked off the course, and on Saturday trainer George Weaver reported she “just had a couple of scratches, but nothing major. It will take a couple of days to see if anything shows up.”
In 2016, Keeneland installed the Mawsafe rail, a lightweight system from Australia. One safety feature is a horizontal PVC rail that springs and bends. This offers stability while the uprights planted in the ground are meant to “kick out” on impact.
The Mawsafe rail also allows Keeneland to change the running lanes on the turf course by positioning the rail at zero, 10, 15 and 20 feet from the inside to reduce wear and tear on the turf course.
“It's why we do what we do,” Keeneland president and chief executive Bill Thomason said. “Seeing the Mawsafe rail perform as it was intended to ensure the safety of Daddy Is a Legend and her jockey [Friday] was extremely rewarding.”
Weaver said that pending no adverse after-effects from the incident, Daddy Is a Legend could go next in the GI Matriarch S. at Del Mar Dec. 2. Another option is to give the filly the rest of the year off to prepare for a 4-year-old campaign.
Reward Raised, Shooting Remains Unsolved
The rifle shooting of a weanling colt in the overnight hours of Sep. 27-28 while turned out in a Springhouse Farm paddock in Kentucky's Jessamine County is entering its fourth week as an unsolved crime with no clear leads, the investigator handling the case told TDN.
The weanling had to be euthanized because of spinal injuries when it was found the next morning unable to stand. About a dozen other horses had also been turned out in the same paddock, and numerous shell casings were found on the roadway about 120 yards from the stricken colt.
“The [original $12,500] reward has gone up [to $23,500],” Jessamine County Sheriff's Office lieutenant Anthony Purcell said in a phone interview. “Unfortunately, nobody's come forward. I will say that we have recovered the round from the animal, so right now that's all been sent over to the state laboratories. There's nothing new to report, and I'm afraid if we don't get some kind of a break on it I don't know that this one's going to get solved, unfortunately.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff's office at (859) 885-4139.
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