ARCADIA, CALIF - This Friday and Saturday, between 14 Breeders' Cup races scheduled here at Santa Anita, jockey Garrett Gomez will ride in 13. That's not including the undercard races, one or two on each day, for which he also has mounts. They don't call him Go-Go for nothing.
Gomez is intense. In the six years that have passed since he straightened out the substance abuse issues that plagued his career in its' early days, he has honed his craft to near-perfection. As one horseman remarked at Santa Anita Monday morning, he just keeps getting better.
It has been four years since the talented journeyman, 37, got his first Breeders' Cup wins in the 2005 edition at Belmont Park - the Juvenile with Stevie Wonderboy and the Mile with Artie Schiller. That day, the 2-year anniversary of his entry into rehab, he began a resurgence that has yet to see a limit.
In 2006 he replaced the injured John Velazquez aboard 16 stakes winners, five in Grade I races, and led all jockeys in the nation in graded earnings with $20.1 million. In 2007 he broke Jerry Bailey's record for most stakes victories in a season, winning 76 including the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies with Indian Blessing and the Breeders' Cup Sprint with Midnight Lute. He took home $22.8 million in earnings at the end of the year and an Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey, an honor he was awarded again in 2008 when he missed breaking Bailey's earnings record by just $10,000.
In the Breeders' Cup last year, Gomez became the first jockey to win three Breeders Cup races in one day (the Juvenile with Midshipman, the Sprint with Midnight Lute, and the Dirt Mile with Albertus Maximus). His previous win with Ventura in the Filly and Mare Sprint on Friday gave him a total of four Breeders Cups victories over the two-day span, another record.
The keys to Gomez's success lie not only in his talent and in the connections of his agent, the remarkably well-connected Ron Anderson, but also in his fantastic descriptive abilities and his powers of communication. He shared those descriptions with the racing public through a popular series of blogs on this site through the Triple Crown season, and returns to share the same insights on
ESPN.com for this year's Breeders' Cup starting today.
When Breeders' Cup announced the addition of the Head2Head Jockey Bet, a wager on which jockey will win the most Breeders' Cup races that opens for advance wagering on Nov. 5 and closes before the running of the Marathon the next day, the obvious choice for the morning-line favorite was clear. If Go-Go has anything to do with it, the other riders will be chasing his bright white pants into the Santa Anita sunset.
And that's exactly the way he likes it.