Jockey Dean Kutz Beats the Odds Again

Jockey Dean Kutz can’t reach the change in a soft-drink machine with his fingers. He has to dig out the coins with a pocketknife.

His fingers are too short, their growth stunted since he was 2.

It was the Christmas holidays in North Dakota and his parents were away for the evening. Their home caught fire and the babysitter refused to seek shelter in the family barn because of a ferocious bull. Instead, she chose to walk a mile to the neighbors.

“She carried the infant,” Kutz said. “My two sisters were too small to carry me so I walked along behind. I kept falling down in the snow and I lost my mittens half way there. I kept falling down and falling down.”

That didn’t stop Kutz, who will be riding at Oaklawn Park when the season begins next Friday.

He was riding ponies out of a starting gate when he was 7 and racing thoroughbreds when he was 10.

“By the time I was 10, I was a journeyman,” he said. “I got my experience from 10 to 15 and most of them get their experience from 15 to 18. By that time, I had quite a few winners under my belt.

“Ever since I can remember, it’s all I’ve wanted to do,” Kutz said.

He rode in Canada for more than a half-dozen years and then returned to the United States. Kutz is 30 and his career was progressing nicely until a couple of years ago in Chicago. He was making a piece of toast one morning when he passed out.

“They got me to the hospital and didn’t think I was going to make it,” he said.

After 48 hours, doctors determined that it was his kidney. As it turned out, he apparently had had only one kidney functioning most of his life.

He left Chicago and turned to the track physician at Omaha who guided him to a specialist.

“He told me, ‘The only thing we can do is find some help. We’ve got to find another kidney. We just can’t repair the damaged one.’ ”

Kutz is one of 12 brothers and sisters and the eighth sibling--a sister who is three years older--was a perfect match.

The transplant was Jan. 18, 1985.

Still in the hospital, Kutz was assured he would return to the racetrack. A couple of weeks after surgery, he was jogging a half-mile. In June, he took a job as a patrol judge at Canterbury Downs in Minnesota. “I told them when the time comes and my doctor OKs me, I’m going to go back to riding,” he said.

By September, he was riding again.

“I’m a very lucky person,” he said. “When I was 2 till I was 28, I had the gift of life twice.”

He gives much of the credit for his recovery to a friend, Nancy Baker, who returned to school to help Kutz with his salt-free, sodium-free diet. Because of that diet, he no longer worries about his weight. For instance, he took about a month off recently and then was asked to ride in Arizona. “I hadn’t been on a scale in a month,” he said. “I jumped on the scale and weighed 108 pounds.”

Last year, Kutz had 25 winners at Oaklawn Park. During the year, rode about 150 winners, including Staff Riot to a half-length victory in a $200,000 race at Cantebury.

“After you win it, it’s quite different than winning an ordinary race. Although I like winning any race, I’m thrilled to death, but that was quite a thrill.

“We were about sixth or seventh heading down the backside. Around the turn, he started edging up on them. At the head of the lane, I swung him to the outside and he come a rolling.”

Staff Riot, who beat the favorite in the last few strides, was almost 20-1. When the competition includes Pat Day, Larry Snyder and others who are much in demand, Kutz has to ride a lot of longshsots. “But they can’t read the tote board,” he said. “If it’s their day, they’re gonna get there.”