Roman Chapa

Roman Eric Chapa, a jockey whose promising early career got derailed by repeated rulings-off for using illegal devices to shock horses into running faster, died July 27. Reportedly, the 50-year-old Texan succumbed to devastating injuries he sustained in a March accident while riding in an unsanctioned horse race in Georgia. During his hospitalization, a family member said he spent 45 days in a medically-induced coma. Because of his recent inability to gain licensure at many of the Southwest tracks where he had once been a leading Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse...

Roman Chapa, the jockey who has been suspended three times since the 1990s for possessing illicit shocking objects that can frighten a horse into running faster, rode his first race back on Monday since completing a five-year suspension and paying a $100,000 fine after getting caught with an electrical "buzzer" at Sam Houston Race Park in 2015. Chapa finished fourth on 27-1 Uzi (Overanalyze) in the $20,000 Inaugural S. on the June 8 opening-day card at Arapahoe Park in Colorado. In February, Chapa got his riding license reinstated by the...

The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton The Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon famously got shut out five centuries ago while searching for Florida's mythical Fountain of Youth. He was the heavy favorite to find it, but missing out presumably didn't affect his plans for the first Saturday in May. In more recent times, well-backed horses on the GI Kentucky Derby trail have been similarly luckless trying to find the winner's circle in the elusive Gulfstream Park stakes that shares the same name. Ete Indien (Summer Front)'s wire-to-wire shredding of...

After serving a five-year suspension and paying a $100,000 fine for using an illegal electrical shocking device on a Thoroughbred at Sam Houston Race Park in 2015, jockey Roman Chapa on Thursday got his riding license reinstated by the Texas Racing Commission (TRC), a spokesperson there confirmed. On Friday morning, the 48-year-old jockey crossed the state border into New Mexico to meet with Sunland Park stewards to discuss whether they would allow him to ride there. Izzy Trejo, the executive director of the New Mexico State Racing Commission, told TDN...