Basketball Was This Jockey’s First Love

Kent Desormeaux, North America’s leading jockey, says he spent his childhood hoping to become the Cajun answer to Magic Johnson.

“I wanted to play basketball so bad,” he said recently. “Point guard. I used to cry at night, hoping the Lord would make me taller. Now I pray he doesn’t.”

At 5-foot-3, 100 pounds, Desormeaux knew his basketball career would end at his Muncie, La., high school. That’s why he turned to horse racing.

As an apprentice earlier this year, Desormeaux won 349 of 1,954 races, with 293 seconds, 270 thirds and earnings of $3,446,013. He won 12 stakes races, eclipsing the 1977 record of eventual Triple Crown winner Steve Cauthen, who captured 10.

But Desormeuax’s one-year apprenticeship ran out Aug. 15 and with it his five-pound allowance. Now, “The Kid,” 17, must compete as a journeyman, fighting for mounts he readily received from trainers when he had the attractive weight break.

“I had the jitters like you wouldn’t believe for my first race without the bug (weight allowance),” Desormeaux said in the jockeys’ room at Pimlico. “It’s more of a psychological thing than physical. Five pounds isn’t anything, it’s what it does to your head that matters.”

If Desormeaux was nervous about his new status, he didn’t show it, guiding Our Girl Sukie to a 5 1/2-length victory in his first race. In fact, Desormeaux won 12 races as a journeyman during the final 10 days of the Pimlico season, not a blistering pace but impressive nonetheless.

Some jockeys achieve greatness following a successful apprentice season, like Maryland-bred Chris McCarron, to whom Desormeaux is most often compared.

Yet the fortunes of others, like last year’s Eclipse apprentice winner Allen Stacy, fall off dramatically as a journeyman. Stacy did not finish among the top 10 at Pimlico and recently changed agents in an attempt to regain momentum.

“The first couple of days without the bug people we’re sitting on the side just waiting to see how we’d do,” Desormeaux said. “We won our first race back and we’ve done all right ever since.”

Desormeaux began racing as a 12-year-old, a boy among hard-edged men at the bush tracks in southern Louisiana. They raced in Abbeville and Rayne. The card featured 10 races, sometimes 20 or more depending on who showed up.

Last summer, Gene Short, a jockey’s agent working out of Louisiana Downs, drove four hours to Evangeline Downs in Lafayette to scout a promising 16-year-old rider he knew only as Pee Wee.

“I’m watching this race and I see this jock named Desormeaux split horses, then change hands with the whip four or five times and win with a horse that pays $99,” Short said. “I said, ‘Forget Pee Wee, I want Desormeaux’s book.”’

Pee Wee and Desormeaux turned out to be the same person and the marriage was made. Desormeaux has about 300 victories this year, leading the hard-charging veteran Pat Day by about 25 trips to the winner’s circle.

“The five pounds were a gift,” said Desormeaux, a likeable kid with a soft demeanor. “Now I have to prove I didn’t need it.”

Following a recent interview at Pimlico, Desormeaux raced to get weighed in, telling the reporter he could get fined if he checked in late for the first race.