Thirty-seven minutes. That’s about how long it took for Rajiv Maragh’s dream to become a nightmare last year.
On Sept. 27, he won Belmont Park’s Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic, aboard Main Sequence – crossing the finish line at about 5:18 p.m. At 5:55 (give or take), Wicked Strong clipped heels in the Jockey Club Gold Cup – sending the jockey to the dirt and under a flurry of hooves. Maragh emerged with a broken right forearm that needed two plates and 13 screws to repair. Adding pain to pain, Main Sequence completed his championship season with a Breeders’ Cup Turf win for jockey John Velazquez five weeks later.
Maragh spent four months on the sidelines, enduring surgery and a recovery process that prohibited use of his arm for a month, before returning to riding. He started gingerly, steering his uncle Allen Maragh’s Reggae Boy around the shedrow, then moved on to a racetrack ride aboard Melville for Kiaran McLaughlin, then regular morning work. One day short of 16 weeks after the accident, Maragh rode a race – winning aboard Sky Blazer for trainer Barclay Tagg at Jan. 16 Gulfstream Park.
The comeback continues Saturday as Maragh gets a leg up on Main Sequence in the Grade 2 Mac Diarmida on the turf at Gulfstream. It’s the ninth race on a loaded card, and a welcome milestone.
“He’s a very special horse,” Maragh said Thursday morning. “Any jockey would love to ride a horse like that. When I got hurt, it was disappointing to not be able to ride him and the other horses I was riding at the time. I’m very thankful and feel very honored that they chose to put me back on him.”
Trainer Graham Motion didn’t really mull any other choices.
“I’m extremely fond of Johnny as a rider, plus he’s a very close friend and one of the best riders in the world, but I never considered this not being Rajiv’s ride,” he said. “The fact that he broke his arm extremely badly half-an-hour after winning a Grade 1 on him, I don’t see how I could possibly make the change. Johnny rode him absolutely perfectly, but Rajiv is why we got to where we did with the horse.”
With 11 graded stakes victories and $9.5 million in purse earnings at the time of the accident, Maragh was in the midst of a huge 2014. Then he was in bed, forbidden from brushing his teeth or picking up a fork with his right hand. Despite the strict limitations, surgeons originally left the door open for a comeback in time for the Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup, then slammed it shut. Instead of riding for millions of dollars in purse money at Santa Anita, Maragh tuned in like the rest of us – sort of.
“I went to my uncle’s house (in Florida) and watched with my family, but I only watched two races – the Turf and the Classic,” he said. “I had come to grips with not riding. I really wanted the horse to win and to show on a worldwide stage how good he is. I was very proud of him.”
Maragh, 29, and Main Sequence first teamed up in the summer, when Motion started looking for a rider for the Flaxman Holdings homebred. The chestnut gelding won his first four starts in England for trainer David Lanigan, and finished second to Camelot in the 2012 English Derby. Looking for a reboot after the Kentucky-bred lost his best form, Flaxman sent the son of Aldebaran to Motion for an American campaign. The idea stopped before it ever started when Main Sequence emerged from the trip with pneumonia and spent the first part of 2014 doing little more than walking and taking antibiotics.
By July it was time for a race and Motion targeted Monmouth Park’s Grade 1 United Nations, mainly because it was close to home. Coming off the illness, Main Sequence needed to get started and Motion needed to get a line on his horse.
“I thought he was somebody who would listen to me,” said Motion of Maragh. “I felt like I could talk to him about the horse and I thought he was somebody who’d be able to stick with the horse.”
On a speedy turf course, Main Sequence broke behind the field and was still seventh with 3 furlongs to run. At 8-1, he passed them all to win by a neck over Twilight Eclipse. Motion, who would have been pleased with any sort of progressive run, was impressed. Maragh was blown away.
“The first race was pretty remarkable,” said the jockey. “You get off and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is an incredible horse’. That was a super speed-favoring track that day. Every horse was winning on the lead. He was the only horse who reversed that. He passed a lot of good horses in a short amount of time.”
He did the same in two further Grade 1 wins, nipping Imagining in the final inches of the Sword Dancer at Saratoga, and rallying from closer to a slower pace in the Joe Hirsch. The Breeders’ Cup, with Velazquez at the reins instead of Maragh, was even better as Main Sequence defeated classy Europeans Flintshire and Telescope in addition to old friend Twilight Eclipse (who placed in all four of the champion’s 2014 wins).
Maragh called Main Sequence “pushbutton” and “a jockey’s dream” to ride. He can appear to be a deep closer on paper, but that depends. He can drop well off quick fractions and charge late, as he did in the Sword Dancer. He can draft into contention earlier and still quicken, as he did in the Hirsch. The Breeders’ Cup was a hybrid – slow early, quick in the middle – and Main Sequence ran them down again while never being more than 5 lengths off the lead.
“Some horses, if you move a little bit earlier they lose their kick,” Maragh said. “That’s one of the things that makes him such a special horse. He can adapt to any scenario. In races where they go a little fast, he tends to be further back. If they go slow, he can be closer.”
Saturday, the 6-year-old breaks from the rail as the 6-5 favorite in a field of eight. Main Sequence can run his winning streak to five while facing hard-trying millionaire Twilight Eclipse, Grade 3 winner Divine Oath and five others listed at 12-1 or more on the morning line.
“I’ve watched him train and he’s breezing lights out,” said Maragh. “I looked at the race. For the most part, Twilight Eclipse is the main rival. It’s a great post for a mile-and-three-eighths. Being on the inside, being able to save ground early is good for me.”
Motion expects another strong effort from his new stable star.
“I can’t in my head see where he doesn’t run his race because he’s doing so well,” he said. “Everything’s gone without a hitch. Since the Breeders’ Cup, everything’s gone as we’d hoped.”
As a $200,000 Grade 2, Saturday’s race looks like an odd spot for a dual Eclipse Award winner but it’s also a prep for the $5 million Dubai Sheema Classic March 28 at Meydan. Motion called the preparations perfect. Main Sequence got a month of turnout and no training at Fair Hill Training Center, breezed once there on the Tapeta track and headed to Florida just after Christmas.
“It’s not like he had a long campaign (in 2014), but he’d run four huge races and I thought it was important that he have a little break,” Motion said. “I don’t think these horses can perform at that level without having a break in what would amount to a year and a half. He needed to have a break if we were considering doing what we’re considering.”
They’re considering the Dubai race, against international rivals, and then an American schedule that could mirror 2014 – the U.N. in July, the Sword Dancer (now worth $1 million) in August, the Joe Hirsch in September and the Breeders’ Cup in late October.
Maragh, dreams permitting, will be there.
