A Bumpy Ride

Pat Valenzuela was saying last week that one day in jail felt like a year. Ten years ago, when he won the Kentucky Derby with Sunday Silence, must seem like a lifetime.

Before Sunday Silence, when Valenzuela was 16 and several months away from riding his first winner, he watched raptly on television as Steve Cauthen, another teenager, rode Affirmed to a Derby win and a Triple Crown sweep in 1978. Valenzuela’s uncle, Milo Valenzuela, had told him what it was like to ride in a Kentucky Derby, and what it was like to actually win the Derby, as Milo had done with his first Derby mount, Tim Tam, in 1958.

Then in 1989, Valenzuela found himself going into the gate at Churchill Downs with a strong, near-black colt trained by Charlie Whittingham.

The tote board might have shown that Easy Goer, the horse from New York, was the heavy Derby favorite, but if confidence around Whittingham’s barn had been money, the odds on Sunday Silence would have been shortest of all.

Whittingham, who died Tuesday, thought Sunday Silence was going to win and had told one of the colt’s owners, Arthur B. Hancock III, that they were going to win. Valenzuela was just as upbeat. A month before, he and Sunday Silence had demolished the Santa Anita Derby field, winning by 11 lengths.

Pat Day, a Churchill Downs kingpin who had nevertheless gone winless in the Derby, was a virtuoso in silks on Derby Day in 1989. Day won the five races before the Derby, and a win with Easy Goer would be No. 6.

As the Derby riders headed for the paddock, one of them said to Valenzuela, “Hey, Pat, you could end Pat’s streak.”

“I’m just trying to start a streak of my own,” Valenzuela replied.

He did too. On a cold, rainy day, Sunday Silence was overpowering. Whittingham’s colt might have zigzagged through the muddy stretch, but he beat Easy Goer by 2 1/2 lengths.

Valenzuela, then 27, was in orbit. He had won the race that Steve Cauthen had won, the one that Uncle Milo had told him about winning. Afterward, somebody asked Valenzuela about his problems honoring mounts in California, and about a positive drug test--later thrown out on a technicality--in New Mexico.

“Just say no,” Valenzuela said.

All of this flashed by the other day in Encino, at a lawyer’s office where Valenzuela sat in a blue “No Fear” T-shirt and matching shorts, talking about his last chance. He hasn’t ridden in a year and a half, he’s overweight and he’s unlicensed to even gallop horses in the mornings, but Valenzuela doesn’t think he’s washed up.

That self-admonition at the 1989 Kentucky Derby turned hollow before the year was over. That October, Valenzuela tested positive for cocaine and drew a two-month suspension from the Santa Anita stewards. Whittingham then hired Chris McCarron, who rode Sunday Silence to victory in the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Valenzuela rebounded in 1990--he was the third leading rider that winter at Santa Anita, he won titles at Hollywood Park and Del Mar, and by the end of the year he had gone to Churchill Downs to win two Breeders’ Cup races.

“That was the one thing about Pat,” said Pete Pedersen, a steward on the Southern California circuit. “No matter how long he’d be away, he’d come back and be ready to ride that first day. Amazing, really.”

The other thing about Pat Valenzuela was that he could find hot water at the North Pole. The week after his two Breeders’ Cup wins, he was supposed to ride My Sonny Boy in the California Cup Classic at Santa Anita. But Valenzuela called in sick and My Sonny Boy, with Jorge Velasquez aboard, won the $300,000 race.

Then there was a succession of absences, some of the missed out-of-town assignments piquing the imagination:

* After arriving in Baltimore to ride in a stakes for trainer Eddie Gregson, Valenzuela couldn’t negotiate the final few miles from his hotel to Pimlico.

* Scheduled to ride in a $300,000 stake in Chicago, he mistakenly flew from Los Angeles to Dallas. His mount won with another jockey.

By 1996, Valenzuela had turned off so many California trainers that he switched his base to South Florida. At Gulfstream Park, he submitted a urine sample to state chemists that didn’t seem to be from a human. He won only six of 112 races in Florida, and left without paying his agent the commission on his meager earnings.

His personal life has also been turmoil: two divorces from marriages that produced four daughters, a charge of spousal abuse, and run-ins with police because of erratic public behavior.

In 1995, the Del Mar stewards suspended him for the rest of the seven-week meet after he missed his mounts on opening day. By the fall of 1997, the Santa Anita stewards suspended him again and suggested to the California Horse Racing Board that he “not be considered for re-licensing.”

His attorney, Donald Calabria, was recently able to get charges dismissed after Valenzuela was accused of robbing a cabdriver of $150 at gunpoint. Before the case was dropped, Valenzuela spent 24 days in the Los Angeles County Jail.

“He wasn’t the guy in this one,” Calabria said. “I would have bet my bar license on that.”

Calabria said Valenzeula is working with the Winners Foundation, a backstretch support group that helps racetrackers with their problems.

“The reality of his situation really hit him while he was behind bars,” said Calabria, a sometime horse owner. “I’m going to ask the stewards to reconsider and license him as an exercise rider, with the understanding that he’ll be available for full [drug] testing. We’re going to make a spirited appeal to get him rolling again.”

Valenzuela, 36, said that he last used drugs in December. He weighs 130 pounds, at least 14 pounds too much, and hasn’t been on a horse since December of 1997, when he tore up his right knee while working a young horse at a California farm. For the last month, he has been working at a nursery in Baldwin Park.

“I’ve been . . . [kidding] myself for a long time,” he said. “I hadn’t done anything, but I knew why I was there [in jail]. It was very humbling and devastating. Riding’s my life. I’m a happy person when I’m riding. I’ve done too much taking other people for granted. I’ve had a gift from God--getting along with horses and getting them to run--and I haven’t used it as well as I should have. But even if I don’t make it, if it doesn’t work out this time, I’ll know that I tried again. I’ll be at peace because I’ll know that I tried.”

Calabria said that had Valenzuela’s armed-robbery case gone to court, Whittingham, who had experienced the suicide of a drug-dependent son, had volunteered to appear as a character witness. Calabria also said that trainer Mike Mitchell has said he will give Valenzuela some horses to gallop if he gets licensed.

“I’ve been on a fat-free diet before, so I can handle that to lose the weight,” Valenzuela said. “Once I get on horses, losing weight will be easier.”

Despite a career that has been largely lived on thin ice, Valenzuela has won almost 3,000 races and his mounts have earned more than $95 million. One of his early major horses was Codex, who won the Santa Anita Derby when Valenzuela was only 17.

“Pat could have been as good as any of them,” said Wayne Lukas, who trained Codex. “He was Hall of Fame caliber, and had the skills to be a world-class rider. But even when he was on his game, he had a kind of laid-back attitude that made you wonder.”

In 1985, Lukas shipped the filly Althea to Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., to run in the Arkansas Derby.

“Pat and I flew out there together,” Lukas said. “He slept all the way. Then he slept in the car from the airport to the track. He came out to the paddock before the race and said, ‘Which one’s ours?’ I said, ‘If you look at that number on your sleeve, you’ll be able to figure it out.’ ”

Althea won the race by seven lengths, setting a track record for 1 1/8 miles.

“Pat went back to sleep in the car on the way to the airport, and slept all the way home,” Lukas said.

Valenzuela has won six Breeders’ Cup races, one of them the 1991 Juvenile with the spectacular Arazi, who was owned in a partnership that included Allen Paulson. Paulson, who later raced two-time horse-of-the-year Cigar, was so enamored of Valenzuela’s talents--and Valenzuela’s mother’s home cooking--that he signed him to an annual retainer, reportedly for $500,000.

“I think that contract hurt Pat,” Lukas said. “It made him complacent. He had all that money coming in and didn’t have to do much to earn it.”

Paulson eventually dropped Valenzuela.

Paulson’s wife, Madeleine, ran Fraise in the 1993 Hollywood Turf Cup. Valenzuela, who had won the 1992 Breeders’ Cup Turf with Fraise, was AWOL. For McCarron, who had taken over on Sunday Silence, it was serendipity again. He and Fraise won the $500,000 race.

Lukas doubts that he would use Valenzuela if he returned. David Flores, who had a substance-abuse problem a few years ago, was asked about Valenzuela. Flores was the leading rider at the Santa Anita meet that ended Monday and will ride Prime Timber, one of the favorites, in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.

“If [Valenzuela] wants it bad enough, let him show that he can do it,” Flores said. “If I can make it back, anybody can.”

Valenzuela was asked if he can expect to get much business from the many trainers he has disappointed over the years.

“It will be up to them,” he said. “If I get the chance, I’m going to give it my best, and I know I’ll be winning races again.”

Derby Facts

The 125th running of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday:

* TV: Ch. 7.

* Post time: 2:30 p.m. PDT. (Television coverage begins at 1:30 p.m.)

* Last year: Kent Desormeaux won his first Derby aboard Real Quiet.