I’m always asked, “How did you know it was time to retire?” I always say, “You just know.” After 13 years of riding races, in the fall of 2000, I knew. I just knew. With Far Hills in the books and the Colonial Cup looming, here’s something I wrote about my final days as a jockey. It’s part of a book I was writing, but stopped writing. If you like it, there is more. If you don’t, forget I posted it.
Jonathan Kiser was gone and I was going. But I was fighting it. After breaking my ankle in July, I started to think maybe I should ride one more year, you know, one solid steady fun year to end my career. Go out on a good note. When I came back in the fall, I rode two winners – a feature on Atomistic and the Maryland Million on Shamrock Isle – from my first four rides. The thoughts of returning for one more season were starting to come alive in my head, just pick and choose, you’re getting good rides, you can control the danger. Change is tough, I started to waver about making a change.
I went to Far Hills, the best day of the year, with four good rides. Not Bad, a maiden for Janet Elliot, in the first. Indispensable, a veteran I had ridden many times and had success with, in the Appleton for Jack Fisher. Campanile, a solid stakes horse for Elliot in the Breeders’ Cup. I had wanted to ride him since falling off him after a race in 1999. And Atomistic, an old standby, in the New Jersey Hunt Cup, for Jack Fisher. Pretty solid group who were all live.
Not Bad finished fifth. Indispensable buried me.
I was tucked in the middle of the tight field, right were I wanted to be as we set out on the final circuit. Chip Miller was in front on Iron County Xmas, Gus Brown had Hunt Lane in a good spot, Roger Horgan and Grand Turk were in the mix and I was going well, about sixth, as we headed through the middle for the last time. We approached the first fence in the straight and were blinded, the sliver of daylight I had shut. The fence disappeared behind a wall of horses as we tried to clock off the last three strides. Still OK, no problem, it’s now a simple timing pattern, a grid…three, two, the horses pick up in front of you, one, go. Simple, we’ve done it thousands of times. Indispensable didn’t go. He hesitated when he should have gone, he hit the fence with the front of his chest, legs still on the take-off side, I knew he was going down, I slipped my reins the best I could but it was a catapult fall, like a motorcycle running into a cement wall. I landed with my head first, sliding, thinking, ‘Don’t hit your head, don’t hit your head.’ Indispensable rolled over me, stepped all over me as he got to his feet and the trailing horses galloped over me. Then silence. There is no silence like the silence of going from 30 miles and hour, in a pack of horses to lying still in the grass. You take instant inventory. My ankle, broken in July, hurt first. The broken bones and stretched ligaments still tender, a plate and seven screws feeling wrenched and torqued. It was like a hammer on a twisted nail.
Then my head. Damn, my head. A dull ringing, like a radio station between frequencies. ‘Ignore it, Sean. It’ll go away. It always does. Come on, go away…go away…’
The ambulance slowed to a stop next to me.
“It’s just my ankle,” I told them. “That’s why I’m still on the ground. It’s OK, just hurts, must have gotten kicked.
They looked at my ankle first. I walked on it, gingerly, but soundly.
They gave me a ride back to the jocks’ room, I declining a trip to the Somerset Medical Center. My dad and my brother met me at the back door, I climbed off the stretcher where I had been lying and stood at the back door. Dad looked serene, putting out his hand to hold something like he had done so many times before. Joe looked serious, simply serious, the day had lost all its fun for them.
“You OK?” Dad asked.
“I’m OK, my head hurts a little, not bad, but it hurts. Don’t tell Janet.”
“OK, take your time,” Dad said.
“I just want to sit in the jocks’ room for a minute, see if I feel better.”
“OK, take your time.”
“Tell them my ankle hurts, nothing about my head.”
“OK, take your time.”
Then I saw their eyes widen and their backs and shoulder tense.
Janet met me at the door of the ambulance.
“I feel OK. My ankle’s sore and I just want to sit down for a minute,” I said, trying to muster assurance while questioning every word.
“OK, take your time,” Elliot said, echoing my family.
I walked past the luncheon tent and into the jocks’ room, pulling the grass stained blue and green silks of Fitz and Edie Dixon’s from my breeches and unzipped my flak jacket. I sat down on my white plastic chair, dropping my whip and helmet on the top of my open tack bag and waited to see if the ringing in my head would stop or get worse. It can do either and you never know.
Miller walked over, bent down and looked me in my eyes, adjusting his rubber bands around his wrists.
“You OK?” he asked.
“Yeah, my head doesn’t feel right.”
“Talk to Janet?”
“Yeah, for a minute. She’s OK.”
“For now,” Miller said.
“Yeah, I know. She won’t be for long.”
“Need anything?” Miller asked.
“Nah, I got some Gatorade, I just want to sit for a minute.”
Miller picked up my black medium saddle (all jump jockeys have three saddles, light, medium and heavy) and brushed the mud off the top of it, crumpled the number cloth and threw it under a chair in the corner, unfastened the girth from the off side, unbuckled the breast plate. He picked up my helmet, pulled the grass from under the rubber band, brushed mud off the side of it – really, just ground it in deeper. He blew a heavy breath on my goggles and rubbed them on his T-shirt.
“How’d you go?” I asked.
“Second. Shoulda won.”
“Hmmm.”
“Where’d you go?”
“First fence in the middle the last time”
“Going any good?”
“Yeah, OK, I thought. About where I wanted to be.”
“What’d he do?”
“Just didn’t go. He always goes. He just didn’t pick up.”
“Blinded?”
“Yeah, it was tight in there but he still should have picked up. I guess I could have gunned him. I asked, he just didn’t pick up. He always picks up.”
“We were flying around there,” Miller said.
“Yeah, I know. I guess that’s why he didn’t go. He was a little tentative the whole way, but I still thought he was going well.”
“Your ankle OK?”
“Yeah, sore as hell, like somebody’s hammering on it. Not broken. Just hurts.”
“Your eyes look dull.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, just a little dull. You’re making sense, though.”
“I feel OK. I’ve ridden worse. Way worse. But my head’s not right.”
“Janet’s lurking at the door.”
“Yeah, I know. I see her.”
“You’ve still got a race to decide. See how you feel.”
“That’s what I figure. I don’t know, I hate taking off Campanile and Atomistic, spent my whole life trying to get on horses like them. You ride both races?”
“Yeah.”
“Man, they’re good rides.”
“Yeah.”
“Damn, all I wanted was one good day at Far Hills. You know, just a good fun day at Far Hills.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think I can ride. My head’s not right. Ain’t getting better. Worse, maybe. Just an ache, can’t focus.”
“That’s probably the right thing to do,” Miller said, shaking his head.
“I’ll give it another minute but I don’t feel right.”
“Want me to tell Janet?” Miller asked.
“No, I will. If you see Jack out there, tell him I don’t think I can ride Atomistic.”
“Who’s open in the big race?”
“Matt, I think.”
“What about Atomistic?”
“I don’t know.”
“What a way to end the day. This is the last time I’m coming to this place. It’s over, buddy. Over.”
Matt McCarron rode Campanile and Arch Kingsley rode Atomostic. Campanile pulled too hard and did too much too early, finishing last. Atomistic finished second to Ironfist, missing the last when he needed it. I’d like to think I would have won on both of them, maybe. I got dressed in the jocks’ room and walked out to the luncheon tent to get my first square meal for a week. I felt all right. Not great, not right, but all right. I have to admit, it was a relief in a way to not be riding. Years earlier, I would have ridden, no doubt. Miller would have known, maybe my dad, my brother, but nobody else would have known I wasn’t at my best, they would have gotten out of the way, like they had done before.
It was a tough decision to make, but the right one. When I took off two stakes winners, I didn’t want anybody to think I wasn’t brave. Looking back on it, now that I’m not a jockey, taking off those horses was braver than riding them.
I went to the bar for a glass of water and then stood in the buffet line, desperately reaching for a roast beef sandwich. I was cold, I remember being really cold. To the bone. It wasn’t a cold day.
People looked at me in a way they had never looked at me before. It was time to stop. Too many concussions, I knew it, they knew it. It wasn’t brave, it was pathetic. Mimi Voss looked at me like my mother. She seemed so sad, looking in my eyes – worried, simple worry – as she had seen me like this before and didn’t want to see it again. My friends Frank Scatoni and Pete Fornatale, who reveled in Rowdy Irishman’s big win on the same grounds in 1997, looked stunned. Now, they felt the other side. Seeing me busted, they almost seemed guilty for having so much fun with my riding career over the years. Three years earlier, I won the Breeders’ Cup Grand National, we took the train into Manhattan, partied all night. Now, they look at me with pity. When you’re hurt like this, especially your head, you feel like you’re a display at a museum. Here’s Tyrannosaurus Rex, extinct. It’s like you’re there, but you’re not there. Just a concept, a figure, not a person.
I went home early, beating the traffic and fleeing the judgment.
I knew when I hit the ground on Indispensable that it was all over. Even though I still wanted to ride the last two races on the day, I knew the Gods had told me that it was over. It was like they said, “OK, Sean, come back from breaking your ankle, the other concussions, that’s fine. Have a little fun, a little success, maybe one or two to savor, and then retire like you said you were going to do.” Then when I started thinking about coming back for another year – I actually thought I could pick my rides, control the risk – it was like they said, “No. No. No. This is it, Sean. We hate to do this but this is it.” Slam, down goes Indispensable. I never learned a lesson quicker and without doubt. Sliding on the ground, I was thinking, ‘Don’t hit your head,’ and ‘It’s time to go.’
Knowing it was over, there was only one thing left to do. Ride at Camden in three weeks. That would be it. I know it sound ridiculous, admitting it’s over and still riding one last time. American jump jockeys retire at the Colonial Cup. That’s the final chapter. The final ride.
