Garrett Gomez takes success in stride

It was arguably the biggest win of the new year for Garrett Gomez, one that stamped the jockey and his horse as serious contenders in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.

So when Gomez climbed off Pioneerof The Nile in the winner’s circle after the Santa Anita Derby on April 4, there was much to celebrate, right?

“We went out to dinner. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary,” says his wife, Pam.

Nor, for the jockey, are victories. Which might excuse Gomez’s blase attitude.

But Gomez, 37, has another explanation. Once a race is over, he says, it’s time to think about the next one. And there’s no use celebrating a race that hasn’t been run yet.

“I’m never happy or content with anything that I have. I always want more,” he said. “[What] I’ve accomplished right now doesn’t mean anything, because I’m caught up in the moment. What I did yesterday doesn’t mean anything, because I’m worried about today.”

For the rest of us, however, Gomez has put together a string of yesterdays that demand reflection. His mounts have led the country in earnings each of the last three years, winning more than $66 million combined. He has won two consecutive Eclipse Awards as the nation’s top rider and captured eight Breeders’ Cup races -- including four in 2008, making him the only rider to win more than two in a single event.

What he has never done, though, is win a Kentucky Derby. And this year, two trainers with elite entries in the field -- Hall of Famer Bob Baffert, with Pioneerof The Nile, and Todd Pletcher with East Coast favorite Dunkirk -- built their horse’s reputation with Gomez in the saddle.

But he can ride only one Saturday, and to Baffert’s delight, Gomez chose Pioneerof The Nile.

“He’s got a cool head on his shoulders. And on the big days, he’s clutch,” Baffert said of Gomez. “He’s Hall of Fame material now. When you finally get to the point where the business comes to you, that’s when you know you’re great.

“Everybody wants Garrett.”

It wasn’t always that way. In fact, five years ago, no trainer would have put Gomez on a merry-go-round horse, much less a Kentucky Derby favorite.

Gomez was arrested on charges of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia, and he spent 40 days in jail and six months in a rehabilitation program. It was his second trip to rehab and, with his second marriage crumbling, Gomez ballooned to nearly 150 pounds.

“The only way that he would ever recover was to hit bottom,” said Pam, who was pregnant with the couple’s second child when she kicked Garrett out in 2002. It was nearly two years before the couple had a meaningful conversation again.

“The only way he’s going to recover ever, the only chance he has, is to crawl down the sidewalk and have nothing,” she remembered. “I tried to shut down all his resources and let him feel some loneliness. And I hoped and prayed that it would work. I didn’t care if we ever got back together. I just didn’t want him to die.”

There probably were times he wished he had after he came back to the track, only to find he wasn’t wanted.

The son of a jockey, Gomez grew up at racetracks, dropping out of high school at 16 to ride. He even met Pam in the barns at Santa Anita, where she worked as an assistant trainer. But when he returned from his second bout in rehab, the track was no longer a welcoming place. Whether it was a continuation of Pam’s tough love or simply a lack of trust on the part of trainers convinced Gomez was still just a bad race away from a crack pipe -- even though he had won more than 2,000 races in his first 14 years -- he couldn’t buy a mount.

“I thought I might not be able to ride again,” Gomez said as he sat on a stool in front of his locker in the jockeys’ room at Santa Anita. “My whole love is to be where I’m sitting right now. And for me not to be here, it was like I might as well be back doing what I was doing.”

And he might have, had it not been for the support Gomez received from his wife, his sponsors and the Winner’s Foundation, an Arcadia-based group that offers counseling for those in the California thoroughbred racing community.

With their help, he survived the 21 months without a ride before starting a comeback at the Pomona Fair meeting in 2004 -- although his early mounts were hardly the kind of horses that got jockeys excited.

Yet when he managed to guide even some of those animals to the winner’s circle, trainers such as Baffert had to take note.

“He went after it,” said Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, a former Kentucky Derby winner and one of Gomez’s closest friends. “He rode hard to get there. He didn’t just come back and it fell into his lap.”

Gomez has been sober nearly five years now -- a victory he looks back on with pride -- and he spends his free time now at his son’s Little League practices or with his daughter, who jumps horses.

And the compulsive, obsessive side, the side that twice made him a self-destructive addict? He leaves that at the track, which is one reason he believes racing helped save his life.

“He’s doing well, and I hope he realizes that stuff like this doesn’t come around all the time,” Smith said. “You need to take advantage of every opportunity. He’s grown up enough now that he knows that. At least you hope so anyway.”

Pam agrees her husband has grown. And if there’s something good that has come from his personal journey through hell, it’s that the trip made him a better husband, father and rider.

“He failed. He hit rock bottom. His worst fear he was living,” she said. “When he came back, he was just a lot more grateful. He was more in tune with what he was doing rather than just trying to please everybody.”

There’s still one small problem, though. Pam says her husband’s “major downfall at this point [is] he doesn’t sit and appreciate things.”

Which is why, should he finally reach the winner’s circle in his sixth try at Churchill Downs, she hopes he’ll stop long enough to smell the roses. But she knows better than to plan any celebrations.

“It will be spontaneous,” she said.

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kevin.baxter@latimes.com