Tribute Is Held for Gonzalez as Fairplex Resumes Racing

It’s not a question of IF you’ll ever go down, it’s just a question of when.

--Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens

They ran the third race at Fairplex Park in Pomona on Friday with about 50 of J.C. Gonzalez’s fellow jockeys, family and friends standing near the winner’s circle. They were waiting, shortly after the horses crossed the finish line, to pay silent tribute to the 23-year-old jockey who was killed in a spill at the Los Angeles County Fair on Thursday.

Service Term, a 2-year-old California-bred gelding, won Friday’s third race. In the program, which was printed before Thursday’s tragedy, the jockey listed for Service Term was J.C. Gonzalez.

Iggy Puglisi rode Service Term to victory, and upstairs Vince Bruun, veteran publicist, former Daily Racing Form reporter and press-box supervisor at the fair, held several sheets of yellow legal-size paper.

“I don’t quite know what to do with them,” Bruun said.

They were full of notes from the last interview Gonzalez ever gave, on the morning of his death. Bruun had planned to send out something on Fairplex Park’s defending riding champion later in the week.

Instead, he was preparing a funeral notice. Services will be held today at 7 p.m. at the Lorentzen Mortuary in Reseda. A viewing will be held Sunday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Gonzalez’s body will be shipped home for burial in Yahualica, Mexico.

A J.C. Gonzalez Memorial Fund has been started, and donations can be made through the Los Angeles County Fair, P.O. Box 2250, Pomona, CA 91769.

The Oak Tree Racing Assn. at Santa Anita will be contributing, according to Oak Tree President Sherwood Chillingworth. It was during the Oak Tree meet, in the fall of 1997, that Gonzalez broke a leg and his pelvis in a spill.

Recovering from those injuries, the 5-foot-3 105-pounder came back last year to become one of the leading apprentice riders in the country. He was a finalist for the apprentice Eclipse Award, a honor that went to the New York-based Shaun Bridgmohan.

“He was one of my closest friends,” jockey Danny Sorenson said in a tearful interview late Thursday. “He came [to the Southern California thoroughbred circuit] as an experienced horseman. He might have been an inexperienced rider as far as thoroughbreds go when he first got here, but his work with quarter horses already made him an experienced horseman.”

It was Accomodator, the horse Sorenson was riding in Gonzalez’s last race, that went over the top of the fallen Gonzalez after his mount, Wolfhunt, broke both front legs. Sorenson, dazed and bleeding, instinctively rolled under the inner rail to protect himself. It’s a maneuver of self-preservation that jockeys are taught early in a rough-and-tumble profession.

“The horse [Accomodator] behind [Gonzalez] was the one that killed him,” trainer Scott Craigmyle said. “It was a freak thing.”

Craigmyle, having put in a $5,000 pre-race claim for the 4-year-old colt that started the day in the care of trainer Sandy Shulman, was watching the race from the top of the stretch and saw Wolfhunt break down.

At least one trainer, not wanting his name used, suggested that horses dropping drastically in class--Wolfhunt had run on July 31 for a $10,000 claiming price--should be examined with an extra-fine-tooth comb before a race.

Craigmyle said that Wolfhunt had been checked out.

“This horse passed the vet’s test,” he said. “Let’s face it, we run horses in a business where all of them could have some sort of problem. But I wouldn’t have claimed a horse that was about to break down, or was a hazard for a jock to get on. I want the public to know that this wasn’t a crippled horse going into the race.”

Craigmyle sometimes used Gonzalez on his horses. “He was a hard-trying jock,” Craigmyle said. “When you threw his leg over a horse, you knew he’d be trying for you.”

Chris McCarron, who doesn’t ride during the 18-day Fairplex meet, was at the races Thursday to sign autographs. Judy McCarron, his wife, came along. Her husband has been seriously injured in several spills, and she was asked if she tenses up whenever he goes out there.

“Not anymore,” she said. “Knock on wood, but I’ve never actually been at the track to see Chris get hurt.”

Horse Racing Notes

Three of the horses originally assigned to J.C. Gonzalez were winners--two ridden by Iggy Puglisi and one by Mike Ziegler. . . . David Flores and Martin Pedroza took off their mounts, too emotionally upset to concentrate on riding. . . . The Foothill and the Bustles and Bows Stakes, each worth $50,000, have been rescheduled. They were among the seven races wiped out Thursday after the fatal accident. The Foothill will be run Sunday and the Bustles and Bows next Thursday. . . . In announcing that it had completed its $140-million purchase of Hollywood Park, Churchill Downs said Eual Wyatt would remain as vice president and general manager. Don Robbins, president of Hollywood Park during R.D. Hubbard’s regime, becomes a consultant for the track in governmental and racing affairs.