Back in the Spotlight : Horse racing: Chris McCarron returns to ride at Del Mar a week ahead of schedule after a serious fall at Hollywood Park.

The owners were getting antsy, waiting for the star of the show. Chris McCarron, just back after recovering from two broken legs and a broken arm, had ridden the day’s fifth race and was a little late getting to the paddock for the sixth.

“Give him a minute,” trainer Gary Jones said. “He’s probably getting some oxygen.”

McCarron might have thought about taking gas after his comeback at Del Mar on Thursday--he finished fourth and 11th with his two mounts--but he said he was satisfied with his performance and was absolutely giddy about his physical condition after nearly three months on the sidelines.

He was the nation’s second-leading jockey when he went down in a grisly spill at Hollywood Park on June 3, only two hours before he was scheduled to ride Sunday Silence, the 1989 horse of the year, in the Californian Stakes.

McCarron’s injuries were extensive. When a horse, ridden by Kent Desormeaux, broke down in front of McCarron’s on the far turn, the jockey was thrown, snapping his left thigh on impact. Then he was kicked by a trailing horse, breaking his right shin and right forearm.

That night, at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, the 35-year-old hall of famer looked down at the wreckage and wondered, “How long this time?”

He had lost five months in late 1986 and early 1987 when a similar fall shattered his left thigh at the hip. This appeared every bit as bad.

“How long?” repeated Dr. Dan Capen, who had helped put McCarron back together again last time. “Oh, maybe three months.”

McCarron was skeptical. But once surgery was completed and Dr. Douglas Garland pronounced all procedures successful, McCarron began to believe the prediction. Within three weeks, he was swimming. More strenuous therapy soon followed. And by mid-July he was beginning to dream the impossible.

McCarron even considered starting his comeback in time to ride Sunday Silence in the Arlington Challenge Cup in Chicago on Aug. 3, if trainer Charlie Whittingham wanted him for the mount.

Sunday Silence injured an ankle and was retired, making a miracle McCarron comeback moot. Still, for McCarron to be back in action as soon as Aug. 23 was close to amazing.

“When I looked at the latest X-rays, I saw these little lines in the bone where the breaks were,” McCarron said as he prepared for his first ride.

“I said, ‘Doug, this doesn’t look healed to me.’ And Doug said, ‘Of course it’s not completely healed. It’s only been three months! But you can ride. If I were you, I would be riding.’ ”

Brian Mayberry, who gave McCarron his comeback mount Thursday on the 5-year-old sprinter Icy Amber, has known McCarron since he was working as a stable boy on the Maryland-Delaware circuit.

“He’s done some incredible things,” Mayberry said. “But even I was a little surprised that he came back so fast from this one.

“However, as soon as I heard he was ready to go, I wanted to be in a position to give him his first horse if at all possible,” Mayberry said. “He’d never ridden Icy Amber before, but I thought this was a race he could win.”

For a moment, McCarron appeared to be on his way to a Hollywood-style return. Icy Amber broke alertly in the six-furlong event, pressed the pace down the backstretch, then briefly took the lead inside the stretch.

Up in the stands, Scotty McClellan, McCarron’s agent, was screaming his head off: “Come on, Chris! Come on, buddy! Let him out! Open up on them!”

Alas, Icy Amber tired in the final strides, not his jockey. Icy Amber was fourth, about 2 1/2 lengths behind victorious Cutter Sam.

McClellan wasn’t really disappointed.

“It’s important to put Chris on horses who have a chance,” the agent said. “At the same time, I don’t want him on a bunch of 2-5 shots. That would be putting too much pressure on him while he is getting 100% fit.”

McCarron didn’t quantify his condition, but as he returned to the jockeys’ room after riding Native Pocket to an 11th-place finish in the sixth race, he admitted to feeling better than he expected.

“I knew I was in better shape this time than in 1987,” he said as he glad-handed his way through the crowd. “The nature of the injury was different. I never had any real setbacks with the rehabilitation this time around.

“Still, it will be maybe three or four days before I know I’m 100% fit. How will I know? When I can bust a horse out of the gate and ride him hard all the way to the wire and then not feel like falling off.”

As he entered the walking ring to ride Icy Amber, McCarron was greeted by spontaneous applause from fans lining the white rails. McCarron stopped to sign a couple of autographs, gave a clenched fist to McClellan standing nearby, and approached Mayberry for pre-race instructions.

McCarron knew there would be attention to his return--”It was like riding in a fish bowl”--but his family and friends kept things purposely low-key. His wife, Judy, was watching their oldest daughter Stephanie ride in a show-horse competition, for instance. And his parents had returned home from a brief vacation.

But there was no keeping comedian Tim Conway from McCarron’s return. A horse owner who helps raise money for a special disabled jockeys’ fund, Conway needled McCarron as he got a leg up from assistant trainer Leandro Mora.

“See if you can stay on this time, huh, jock?” Conway deadpanned.

Both of McCarron’s mounts gave him the opportunity to test his mettle--and metal, because both his right arm and left thigh are healing with the help of long stainless steel pins.

“Both horses were getting out (bearing to the right),” McCarron said after his second race. Because of that, I was leaning left and putting about 80% of my weight on my left leg. It felt just fine.

“I also used my stick right-handed once, and there was no problem with that, either.”

McCarron will try to pick up where he left off last June, trying to win the richest possible races on any given weekend. He already has two choice commitments from trainer Gary Jones: the ride on Classic Fame in the Sept. 2 Arlington Million, and on Quiet American in the Woodward Stakes, Sept. 15 at Belmont Park.

In terms of priorities, however, he may want to win Saturday’s ninth race at Del Mar as much as any of them. He will be aboard a $25,000 claimer named Saucy Sam, which is owned by Dan Capen, the orthopedic surgeon who predicted McCarron would be back in three months.

He missed by a week.