Speed riders break quickly from the gate and try to stay ahead position riders are adept at saving ground and finding holes in the pack closers ride best from behind. Most jockeys become known as specialists in one or another part of the race. Features about upcoming races are interspersed with full-page ads for horse sales and stallion-breeding services, such as those of Tapit, a champion sire that earns his owner as much as three hundred thousand dollars per stud session. I was watching from a box in the clubhouse with Sean Clancy, a former steeplechase rider (jump jockeys belong to a different racing circuit entirely), who, with his brother Joe, puts out the Saratoga Special, a free daily newspaper. Also, as trainers note with approval, the brothers race as hard for fourth place, which earns owners purse money but gets the jockey no extra percentage, as they do for third place or higher. But they still ride in the everyday races that a lot of the top jockeys skip. Jose has earned more than ninety-eight million dollars in purses since 2012 and Irad more than a hundred and fourteen million since 2011. The Ortizes’ winnings have piled up quickly. Riders who consistently finish out of the money don’t stay around the N.Y.R.A. Second- and third-place jockeys get a smaller percentage of the share. At the N.Y.R.A.’s three venues-Saratoga Aqueduct, in Queens and Belmont, on Long Island-that is sixty per cent of the over-all purse. For first place, jockeys receive ten per cent of the owner’s share. A kind of social Darwinism permeates the jockeys’ world, not unlike that of the robber barons who made the upstate New York spa town of Saratoga Springs the place to be during the summer meet. The New York Racing Association’s jockeys are guaranteed a mere hundred dollars per race for taking part in what is one of the most dangerous of professional sports. The brothers were competing for the purse money, as all jockeys do. Jose rides lower and gets more leg on the horse. Irad was perched higher on his mount, his stirrups short, and his legs looked more severely chicken-winged than Jose’s at the knee. Today, sunny and dry, was a three-goggle day.Īs the brothers raced side by side, the difference in their riding posture, or purchase, was clear. When the track is muddy, jockeys will wear up to five pairs of plastic riding goggles layered on top of one another, so that they can quickly peel away the outermost lenses as soon as they become encrusted with flying muck losing visibility, even for a microsecond, can be disastrous. But Jose remained close, while also wide enough of Fortunate Queen’s hindquarters to avoid getting pelted, and settled into the space between the leader and the third-place horse, Miss Pearl, which, each brother knew from his research, was the only other horse with speed.Įverything about the brothers’ gear is designed to weigh as little as possible, including the flak jackets they wear under their brightly colored silks, their shiny black boots that look like patent leather but are made of vinyl and weigh about three ounces each, and their lightweight helmets. His strategy was to get ahead, “save ground” by riding the rail, and hope to discourage Jose’s mount, a three-year-old named Fairybrook, by kicking dirt in her face. They veered masterfully toward the rail, intimidating the other horses but not quite interfering with them.Īs the horses hit top speed, about thirty-eight miles an hour, Irad, aboard a four-year-old filly named Fortunate Queen, held a two-length lead. Within three strides, the pair led the field. They burst from the gate together, with Irad, who is eighteen months older, slightly ahead, and Jose on his brother’s flank. Starting next to each other on the far outside of the dirt track were Irad and Jose Ortiz, two Puerto Rican jockeys, age twenty-five and twenty-four, whose rides have been electrifying New York’s racetracks in recent years. “They’re off!” the trackside announcer called for the tenth time that day, a Wednesday in August, at the Saratoga Race Course. To hear more feature stories, download the Audm app for your iPhone.
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