It’s Been a Rough Ride for Hacek : Horse racing: Jockey agent endures trying times, all the while caring for a daughter with Down’s syndrome.

For jockeys’ agents, racing brings one crisis after another. By definition, the job is an unstable existence.

A trainer or horse owner might want to switch riders for the next $100,000 stakes race. Your jockey could be eating too much, or in trouble with the track stewards for rough riding and facing a suspension. You might even have two horses offered in a big race, and know you will make one of the trainers unhappy, no matter which one you choose. Then your jockey goes into a slump. He blames you for putting him on cold horses and threatens to hire somebody else.

Harry (the Hat) Hacek, who has been booking rides for top jockeys from New York to California for more than 20 years, has wrestled with all of these problems. But six years ago, something happened in Hacek’s life that made those worries seem insignificant. His wife, Sharon, gave birth to their fourth child, and Kim Hacek was born with Down’s syndrome. Later, it was discovered that she had leukemia.

Kim Hacek is the reason her father was driving cross-country this week from New York to San Francisco. A stop was scheduled at Oaklawn Park, in Arkansas, just so Hacek could keep a hand in his work. The odds were against it, but he might even have found a jockey there who would want to come to California.

“I’ll be back in California soon,” Hacek said from New York a few days ago. “Older and wiser, and unemployed.”

Hacek, 45, is doing the best he can to smile through some trying times.

Last year, with Sharon tending to Kim and their three other children in San Mateo, Hacek went to New York, where he was going to book mounts for Robbie Davis. That was a challenge unlike most, because many trainers, who desire continuity with their horses, were not convinced that former New Yorker Davis would be a permanent addition to the riding colony there.

Davis lacks none of the riding skills, but his psyche was tortured by the 1988 spill at Belmont Park that resulted in the death of Mike Venezia. Although blameless, Davis has never recovered from the fact that it was his horse that trampled Venezia.

Davis and Hacek were starting to click during the 1992 fall meeting at Aqueduct, where the jockey finished second in the standings. But when Hacek went home for Christmas to be with his family, he realized that his priorities were not in New York.

“Sharon needed some help with the home care,” Hacek said. “I’ve got a young family. There’s a daughter who’s 11, and we’ve got sons 9 and 7, besides Kim. Robbie came to New Yorkfor his family, to get re-established again. But now I belong back in California with my family.”

The Haceks moved from Southern California to San Mateo a few years ago, having been told that Stanford and other Bay Area medical facilities were the best for Kim. Hacek worked for jockeys that were winning races--an agent’s commission is as much as 25% of what a jockey earns--but because purses at Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields are considerably smaller than those at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and the New York tracks, Kim’s medical bills were mounting and his earnings dwindling.

At one point, Hacek went on the road with Aaron Gryder, a California jockey who wanted to try the East. “Gryder the Rider,” said their business cards. “Works Without Appointment.”

The flamboyant Hacek, who earned his nickname in Chicago because he wore baseball caps on the backstretch, came up with that idea.

“It doesn’t hurt to give people an extra reason to remember you in this game,” he said.

Gryder was able to establish himself in the New York area, but Hacek, needed by his family, didn’t go the distance with him.

Last week, before leaving New York, Hacek spent the greater part of two days with Chris Antley, one of the top jockeys, trying to sell him on a campaign in Southern California.

“Chris thought about it, but wouldn’t come,” Hacek said. “He’s just bought a house in New York. Another part of it is that New York riders never do well in California, even the best ones. Jose Santos was the latest, and before him there were guys like (Steve) Cauthen, (Angel) Cordero and Cash Asmussen.

“Jockeys can come from any other place and make the adjustment. Chris (McCarron) and (Kent) Desormeaux came from Maryland. (Eddie) Delahoussaye was from the Midwest. They’ve all done real well in California, and I was with Chris and Eddie when they were out there in the beginning. But the New York thing? I’ve analyzed it and psychoanalyzed it. I don’t know what it is, but when a New York jock comes to California, the doors don’t open. Maybe it’s just an extension of that East-West rivalry.”

Hacek was booking Delahoussaye’s mounts when they nearly won the riding title at Hollywood Park shortly after arriving from the Midwest in 1979.

“There were times when I was with Eddie that I didn’t think he was as dedicated as he ought to be,” Hacek said. “But what did I know? Now, with Kim, I know. Eddie had his own worries with Mandy back then.”

Mandy Delahoussaye, the jockey’s 17-year-old daughter, has had a learning disability since birth.

Craig Hacek, the agent’s 9-year-old son, was named after Craig Perret, the Eclipse Award-winning jockey who has won almost 4,000 races, including the Kentucky Derby with Unbridled in 1990.

“Craig (Perret) is the reason why I became a jock’s agent,” Hacek said. “We were sharing a tack room at Arlington Park, him not yet old enough to ride and me walking horses for a trainer. Craig told me then that I had the gab to become an agent. It’s funny. We were at that same barn, doing business, a couple of years ago. Only Craig was there this time because he was riding Unbridled. We both remembered that that’s where it all started.”

Hacek is proud of the fact that he was one of the people McCarron thanked in 1989 when the jockey made his induction speech at the Racing Hall of Fame ceremonies in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

When Steve Cauthen was at Santa Anita in the winter of 1979, in the throes of what would become a 110-race losing streak, he called Hacek in New York to see if the agent could come West and help out.

“I came, too,” Hacek said. “But I didn’t get there quick enough. By the time I got there, Cauthen had already signed the contract with (Robert) Sangster and was leaving for England. But that all goes with the job, doesn’t it? I guess I was hired and fired before I even had the chance to get the kid a mount.”