TICKETS TO RIDE : Jockey Desormeaux Commutes by Train to Race Day and Night

The hottest jockey in Maryland--and the country--won’t have a mount Saturday when the Preakness Stakes is run for the 114th time here at Pimlico.

But Kent Desormeaux, who has won more than 255 races this year, would be in no quandary if he were allowed the pick of the eight-horse field. If the crowd of about 80,000 is hard-pressed to separate Sunday Silence and Easy Goer, the 1-2 finishers on a muddy track in the Kentucky Derby, Desormeaux can help them out, free of charge.

“The horse to ride Saturday is Easy Goer,” the 19-year-old Desormeaux said the other day. “I think he’ll win the Preakness, regardless of whether the track is muddy or not.”

If Desormeaux handicaps races as well as he rides them, his opinion on the Preakness can’t be dismissed. On a mission to break the record that another 19-year-old, Chris McCarron, set when he rode 546 winners as an apprentice in 1974, Desormeaux is riding at Pimlico by day and at Garden State by night--and knocking them dead in both places.

At Pimlico, the competition isn’t even close. For the meeting that began on March 2, Desormeaux has won 111 races with 25% of his mounts and has 48 more wins than Joe Rocco, second in the jockey standings.

Three or four days a week, Desormeaux rides the next-to-last race at Pimlico, which is usually off at 4:45, then takes a seven-minute drive to the Baltimore train station. He catches the 5:31 train to Philadelphia, which is about 100 miles away. There’s one stop, in Wilmington, Del., and after arriving in Philadelphia, it’s a 15-minute ride to suburban Garden State Park. Desormeaux usually arrives there in time to ride the third race.

As a result, Desormeaux already has ridden in close to 850 races this year. His overall winning rate has been almost 29%, an extraordinary mark for a jockey.

In 1974, McCarron’s winning percentage was .248. He rode in 2,199 races, mostly at Maryland and Delaware tracks. In the fall, when Sandy Hawley’s 1973 record of 515 wins became reachable, McCarron rode six days a week at Laurel, Md. He also competed at Penn National, near Harrisburg, Pa., on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons.

McCarron broke Hawley’s record on Dec. 16, then rode 30 more winners before the year ended.

“We’re halfway there (toward breaking the record),” Desormeaux said. “Our chances look good. If I can’t break McCarron’s record, maybe at least I’ll go past Hawley’s. And If I break the record, I hope they’ll give me the Eclipse Award (as the year’s outstanding jockey).”

No matter what happens, this will probably be the last year in Maryland for Desormeaux. What’s left to win? He’s considering a move to either California or New York, depending on the connections he can make in either racing center.

A handsome, dark-visaged teen-ager who handles himself with a maturity beyond his years, Desormeaux knows that he’s got to be lucky as well as good to break McCarron’s record. Last year, he was also determined to break the record, and he started quickly, winning 89 races in the first 55 days. But on Feb. 25 a horse he was riding went down at Laurel, and Desormeaux suffered a broken collarbone.

He was out for a month, and after coming back he rode for only two weeks before aggravating the injury in another spill. He spent another two weeks on the shelf.

“I figure that counting suspensions and injuries, I missed about 3 1/2 months,” Desormeaux said. “And I still won 474 races. So my agent (Gene Short) figured that if we could avoid time on the ground this year, we’d have a good chance at the record.”

Suspensions may be more of a roadblock for Desormeaux than injuries. He has already sat out seven days this year, courtesy of the stewards, and has appealed another seven-day suspension, although he doesn’t really expect to have it overturned.

When Desormeaux started riding, back home in Louisiana, the racing wasn’t even supervised by stewards. These were the bush tracks, not licensed by the state, and the betting was largely my-horse-against-your-horse.

“It could get real nasty riding back there,” Desormeaux said. “There were no rules and you’d do anything to win. You rode as though you were in an automobile race. There wouldn’t be big fields, maybe only five horses in most races, but the only time there might be an inquiry or a disqualification was when the owner of the track said something.”

The operator of one of those tracks was Harris Desormeaux, Kent’s father, who ran a place called Acadiana Downs. There are six children in the family--Keith, Kent, Kristie, Kelly, Kaelin and Kip--but only Kent has become a jockey. His parents tried to discourage him because of the injury factor, but race riding was the only thing he ever wanted to do.

At 16, Desormeaux officially began his riding career at Evangeline Downs, a small but recognized Louisiana track. Short had been working as an agent at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas, and hearing about an upstart they called Pee Wee, the agent went to Louisiana to see him ride.

“He had just started his bug (apprenticeship),” Short said. “After I got a look at him, there were dollar signs in my eyes.”

The two arrived in Maryland in November of 1986. Maryland has long been a Mecca for young riders--McCarron, Ron Franklin, Alberto Delgado and Allen Stacy won Eclipse Awards as top apprentices and Donnie Miller was a standout bug boy here even though he didn’t win the award.

But Desormeaux’s first race in Maryland was no harbinger of things to come. The horse was disqualified and the jockey was suspended for seven days.

By 1987, however, he had adjusted and winners came in bundles. He once won six races on a 10-race program. The totals at the end were 450 wins, $5.1 million in purses and the Eclipse for top apprentice.

Now Pee Wee is called Superman in these parts. He looks a lot younger than Clark Kent, and in fact was going to the movies for half price until a couple of years ago.

“When he was 16, he looked like he was 10,” Short said. “Here he was, making about a thousand dollars a week, and he was saving three dollars by passing for under age at the movies. I finally told him that he ought to start paying full price.”

For all his winning, though, Desormeaux has yet to land a major horse. He rode Thirty Eight Go Go, a good filly, to victory in a $100,000 stake at Pimlico last Saturday, but in the $700,000 Pimlico Special, his mount was Granacus, a 79-1 shot who finished third. He rode his only two Triple Crown mounts last year-- Purdue King, who finished ahead of one horse as a longshot in the Kentucky Derby, and Finder’s Choice, who ran last in the Preakness.

Actually, Desormeaux’s chances of breaking McCarron’s record will be better without major stakes horses, because those are the kind of mounts that take jockeys out of town. Such jockeys usually don’t ride as many races while visiting, and they are also likely to lose mounts that have run at their home track while they’re away.

Desormeaux knows McCarron and the California-based record-holder has given him this advice: “Ride every day, and just do the things you usually do, and don’t think about the record. Don’t rush yourself. The wins will come if you just keep being yourself.”

Desormeaux--it’s pronounced dez-R-mo--may be able to celebrate the record as well as his wedding, which is scheduled for next Jan. 6 in Maurice, La. His fiancee is Sonia Romero, a high school sweetheart.

Asked if he came from a small school, Desormeaux said: “Let’s put it this way--it was small enough that everybody knew everybody else’s first and last name.”

Desormeaux is getting to know the names of some of the commuters on the 5:31, from Baltimore to Philadelphia with the stop in Wilmington. After the last race at Garden State, he catches about two hours’ sleep in his van while a driver gets him to his home in the Maryland suburbs.

The cost of the train is $17, one way. And Desormeaux has been paying full fare. His agent wouldn’t let him go for anything less.