Jockey Kent Desormeaux will finish outside of the top 15 in the jockey standings at the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting that ends on Sunday.
For the 55-year-old Hall of Famer, the results are not good enough. He yearns for more activity, and more mounts in a year in which he is attempting to rejuvenate a fascinating, and sometimes troubled, career.
Through Thursday, Desormeaux had won 7 races from 35 mounts at Santa Anita since Dec. 26, good enough for a respectable 20 percent win rate.
“We’re working with what we have,” Desormeaux said on a recent March morning. “We’ll keep on trying to make more opportunities.
“What I’m being offered are types that I can work with and hopefully I can help.”
Desormeaux rode sparingly in 2024, winning 8 races from 99 mounts, riding primarily in Southern California and briefly at Gulfstream Park in June. He did not ride for more than a month from early September to mid-October, and had his final mount of the year in mid-November.
Desormeaux resumed working in the mornings at Santa Anita at the end of the year, but realized quickly that he needed to intensify his activity to ride races.
One morning shortly after the start of the current season on Dec. 26, Desormeaux approached his agent, Sue McBrayer, at Clocker’s Corner, a popular hangout spot adjacent to the racetrack.
Desoremeaux told McBrayer he needed more activity in the morning. Fitness was an issue.
The solution was to stay busy in ways most riders his age would reject.
“I went on the backside and said, ‘Just let me gallop them,’” Desormeaux recalled of his conversations with trainers. “And they did. I needed to work.”
Desormeaux had his first mount of the season on Jan. 4, and won his first race of the year with his third mount, on Jan. 19.
This weekend, Desormeaux has four mounts from Friday through Sunday, including his first stakes mount since mid-February in Saturday’s $125,000 Evening Jewel Stakes on Om N Joy. Desormeaux is seeking his first stakes win since Lord Prancealot in the Graduation Stakes at Del Mar in August 2023, and his first at Santa Anita since Stilleto Boy in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap in March 2023.
Last year, Desormeaux spent time with family in Louisiana after the passing of his father. In a recent visit, Desormeaux said a return to racing this year has been a career reboot, of sorts.
“When I came back, it was starting over,” he said. “It’s been a challenge.”
On a personal basis, Desormeaux insists his health has improved after alcohol-related disruptions.
“More than sobriety, a lot of things in my personal life” are different, he said, declining to elaborate. “A lot of things are changed. I’m in a good place.”
Desormeaux was suspended briefly in 2020 because of an altercation in an RV park at Del Mar in which he used a racial slur toward a black cameraman. He stayed at an in-patient rehabilitation center that fall to address issued related to alcoholism.
Desormeaux missed significant time in 2022 after he was suspended in March of that year for failing to appear at a hearing regarding another incident at an RV Park in Del Mar in the fall of 2021. He met with stewards that summer and was given a 60-day suspension for the 2021 incident, which allegedly involved alcohol.
As a condition of his return in the fall of 2022, Desormeaux was required to undergo daily testing for alcohol before he was allowed to ride workouts. At times, Desormeaux was unable to work horses in the early hours of training because California Horse Racing Board staff had not arrived to conduct the test.
The terms of the testing were recently altered to allow Desormeaux greater flexibility to work horses at any time of the morning and undergo tests later in the day.
“They gave me a lot of relief,” he said of the testing conditions. “When they’re not here, I can still ride.”
Through Thursday, Desormeaux had won 6,182 races in the United States, including the Kentucky Derby three times, most recently on Big Brown in 2008; and six Breeders’ Cup races, the most recent of which was Roy H in the 2017 Sprint at Del Mar.
Desormeaux has won three Eclipse Awards – as the champion apprentice of 1987, and outstanding rider in 1989 and 1992.
At an age when he could be a father to many rival jockeys based at Santa Anita, Desormeaux aspires to add to his career totals. He is a bridge to an era in which his rivals at Santa Anita in the 1990s were men such as Eddie Delahoussaye, Chris McCarron, Corey Nakatani, Laffit Pincay Jr., Alex Solis, and Gary Stevens, to name a few.
They are all retired. Desormeaux is still active, and hoping for a bright spring and summer.
“I have to take everything day-by-day,” he said. “I want some chances.
“I’m in a good place right now. I don’t think I’ve been this fit in years, weight and condition. That has a lot to do with my way of life now.”
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