Patrick Valenzuela back on top with Del Mar Futurity win
As comebacks stand it may not quite be up there with Lazarus but the latest return of Patrick Valenzuela takes some believing.
Just as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were two souls fighting for supremacy over the same body there appears to be two sides fighting for the right to control the jockey, who started his latest comeback in July and capped his run at the Del Mar meeting with a victory on JP’s Gusto in the Grade One Del Mar Futurity.
The win came 20 years after Valenzuela’s only other win in the race, on Best Pal, in between which his career has hit peaks and troughs of Himalayan proportions.
Most reports about Valenzuela have one of two adjectives prominently displayed. When they describe the rider’s talents the word “brilliant” is often no more than a sentence away but, when the subject turns to the man himself, then the word “troubled” is all over him like a cheap suit that he has worn through numerous bans from riding due to alcohol and other substance abuse.
Some men are followed by controversy but in Valenzuela’s case it seems to be three steps ahead of him waiting to open the door for his next problem. The past may be another country but it must appear more like another planet for the 47-year-old, known on the track as P-Val, since he won the 1989 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes on Sunday Silence or his mesmerising last-to-first win on Arazi in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs two years later.
Arazi, trained in France by François Boutin, was drawn widest of all (14 of 14), which meant he started somewhere near the hamburger stall. He was still over a dozen lengths behind early in the back stretch and being written off as another European flop. He then carved his name into American racing folklore as he sliced through the entire field, passing rivals as if they were telegraph poles. Arazi swept past home star Bertrando two furlongs out, powering away to leave the crowd gasping for breath. As Valenzuela reflected years later: “Sunday Silence was the best horse I've ridden but Arazi gave me the biggest thrill I've ever had.”
That was one of his seven Breeders’ Cup victories, along with 15 jockeys’ titles in Southern California since 1986 and nearly 4,000 career wins but in recent years the Hyde-side of Valenzuela has been the more to the fore through the alcohol and drug dependency.
In 2003 Valenzuela swept all five of the riding titles at the three major southern California tracks. It was his most productive year, finishing fifth nationally with purse earnings of $15,697,353. However, the cost of his excesses to Valenzuela has been incalculable. Since November 1978 he has had his licence suspended for the equivalent of more than eight years, without which he would surely have been joining Russell Baze and Jorge Ricardo in their duel to set the world record for career victories.
One of the more bizarre periods of Valenzuela’s turbulent career came in January 2005 when won a court ruling and the return of his licence from the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB). The Board had suspended his licence, yet again, the previous July after the jockey had shaved his body. This, the Board claimed, prevented them from being able to use hair-follicle testing as a way to determine if Valenzuela was still obeying the rehabilitation rules under which he was allowed to ride.
However, as hair follicles are located under the skin, Valenzuela violated no rules by shaving his body according to the court. Having survived that close shave the doubters wondered how long it would take Valenzuela to be shunted on the sidelines again. They were right – following a drink-driving arrest in December 2007 – but, having used up more lives than any cat, he was surprisingly granted a licence to ride at Del Mar this summer, where he has ridden 29 winners to finish third in the jockeys' title behind Joel Rosario and Rafael Bejarano and completed his return with a first Grade One win since 2006.
J P’s Gusto, on whom Valenzuela had won the Grade Two Best Pal Stakes last month, turned the Futurity into a procession, winning by four-and-a-half lengths, and confirming him as the best juvenile colt in California.
“Just like Best Pal, he’s a very feisty horse,” Valenzuela said. “What a runner he is. I had so much horse under me I couldn’t believe it. David [Hofmans the trainer] had him ready. I was just lucky to be on him.”
The irony of that statement may be lost on a man who has made so many visits to the last-chance saloon that he has his own engraved glass behind the bar.
But if Valenzuela has got his life straight there might still be time for him to park Hyde and allow Jekyll to have the freedom of the road.
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