Stevens to Resume Riding Wednesday

Having settled a lucrative disability insurance claim, and his knees not as sore as they were nine months ago, Gary Stevens will start the rest of his riding career Wednesday when he rides in four races at Santa Anita.

Stevens, 37, will be paid between $1 million and $3 million from an insurance company to resolve a policy that kicked in last Dec. 26 when, after riding several races on opening day at Santa Anita, he announced that his arthritic knees, which have been operated on six times, had forced him into retirement.

Since then, Stevens worked as an assistant trainer, exercised horses and even dabbled briefly as a jockey agent, but he missed riding badly. The winner of 4,512 races--a career that earned him a place in the Racing Hall of Fame in 1997--he hired an agent, Harry Hacek, at Del Mar this summer, but never rode while his attorney, Neil Papiano, negotiated over the insurance.

Papiano said Sunday that he preferred not to disclose the exact amount of Stevens’ settlement, but he confirmed that the payment would be in the seven-figure range.

“Let’s put it this way,” Papiano said, “Gary will have to ride a long time before he earns a comparable amount. He could win a couple of Breeders’ Cup races--hell, he could sweep an entire Breeders’ Cup card--and not earn this much. But if he had not ridden at all for the next year and a half, he would have collected $3 million. He could have gone fishing. But he’s not the kind of guy who wants to go fishing. He wants to ride horses, and that says a lot about him.”

At the time he quit, Stevens was riding under contract with Prince Ahmed Salman’s Thoroughbred Corp. Stevens continued working for Salman as an assistant trainer, but he said Sunday that when he returns he will be a freelance rider. He said that he still expects to get some business from Thoroughbred Corp.

Iit is uncertain whether Stevens will be able to line up many contenders for this year’s Breeders’ Cup, which will be run at Churchill Downs on Nov. 4. Stevens doesn’t have a stakes mount at Santa Anita on Wednesday, but has been named on four horses--two for trainer Mike Mitchell and one each for Jerry Dutton and Jack Carava.

“When I first quit, there was a lot of [knee] pain,” Stevens said. “But then in time a lot of that subsided. I’ve worked 22 horses in the last four days, and I feel pretty good. I wanted to come back sooner, but it’s probably a blessing that I had all these months to recover.”

Horse Racing Notes

Sinndar, who races for the Aga Khan, won the Arc de Triomphe in Paris while the heavy favorite and last year’s winner, Montjeu, finished fourth, beaten by seven lengths. . . . Gary Stevens’ older brother, Scott, rode Casey Griffin, a 9-2 shot, to a four-length victory in the $100,000 Ralph M. Hinds Pomona Invitational Handicap, the season-ending stake at the County Fair at Fairplex Park. . . . Martin Pedroza beat out apprentice Tyler Baze, 25-24, to win the Fairplex riding title for the second straight year. With eight wins, Mel Stute won his sixth title. Stute shared the title last year with Paul Aguirre.