Jockey a Belated Casualty of Go for Wand’s Accident

Randy Romero lay on his back near the rail at Belmont Park with the champion filly Go for Wand spinning crazily over his head. He saw that she had broken her leg, but he didn’t know that he, too, had been seriously injured.

Romero wouldn’t know it for three weeks, and he probably won’t ride again until next year.

“X-rays weren’t showing anything, but I knew something was wrong because I kept telling the doctors that I couldn’t breathe well,” Romero said Wednesday from his home in Hallandale, Fla.

Two sets of X-rays taken by different doctors were negative, and it wasn’t until Romero took a bone scan last month that the fractures were discovered.

The bone scan showed eight broken ribs, one broken in two places, and a hairline fracture of the tip of his shoulder.

Go for Wand took her fatal spill on Oct. 27 in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, the third of seven Breeders’ Cup races. She was locked in a neck-and-neck duel with Bayakoa when she flipped over on the homestretch and shattered the bone in her right front ankle. She was humanely destroyed on the track.

Romero, who has ridden more than 3,400 winners in his career, was not thought to be seriously injured, and he rode Izvestia in the Breeders’ Cup Classic later in the day.

Romero said he was sore the day after the Breeders’ Cup, “but I wasn’t hurting that bad. I guess I was in shock.”

But the following day, he was so stiff he called his doctor. X-rays were negative and he was told he “just had some sore muscles.”

“I was injected with some medicine to try to heal me faster, and three days later I flew to Churchill Downs and rode three horses. I got to feeling kind of decent, but I knew something was wrong because I couldn’t pull up my horses,” the jockey said.

“I decided then to stop and see what was wrong before I hurt myself or somebody else. . . . I was lucky I didn’t break my neck or puncture a lung riding those horses,” Romero said. “It could have killed me trying to ride.”

A second doctor performed X-rays that also were negative, and Romero was told to undergo therapy.

“I was going through therapy and I called the doctor later and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing, but the therapy is killing me.’ I couldn’t sleep at night and I was hurting more than ever,” Romero said.

That’s when the bone scan showed the multiple fractures.

He said he is now walking well and doing some light swimming now.

“I’ve got to go back to the doctor Thursday (today), and maybe I can start jogging,” he said. “He said I can ride in two weeks, but I don’t want to rush it. I’m hoping to have a good year, and I want to be very prepared for it.”

Romero said he planned to ride at Gulfstream this winter, then go to Lexington, Ky., for the Keeneland meet, after which he will return to New York.