Delahoussaye Calls It a Career

Eddie Delahoussaye, a member of the Racing Hall of Fame and one of only four jockeys to win the Kentucky Derby in successive years, announced his retirement Monday night, only hours after his doctor told him that he’d be risking serious injuries if he continued riding.

“I’ve hung it up,” Delahoussaye said from his home in Arcadia, not far from Santa Anita. “I’ve always been a realistic guy, and the reality of what could happen if I had another spill left me with no choice. I’ve had a great career and this is the time to end it.”

Delahoussaye, 51, had not ridden since he suffered the fifth concussion of his career when his mount, See- ingisbelieving, fell near the half-mile pole of a grass race at Del Mar on Aug. 30.

He had been undergoing therapy in the months since then, hoping his condition would improve, but Monday his doctor, Dan Capen, could give him no reason to continue riding.

“I’ve been having trouble remembering things as it is,” Delahoussaye said. “But I’ve been told that my memory will come back with time. I still have tremors in my neck, and if I had another spill, and another concussion, I was told that I might wind up with a condition sort of like Muhammad Ali has. And if I landed on my neck, I might become a paraplegic.”

Delahoussaye won 6,384 races, which ranks him 11th on the career list, and his mounts earned $195 million, which places him No. 6 in the money standings, but for him the apex of his 35-year career was the back-to-back victories he scored in the Kentucky Derby. He won the 1982 race with Gato Del Sol, a 21-1 shot who was last in a 19-horse field after the opening half-mile, and the jockey came back the next year to smell the roses again with Sunny’s Halo, who was the second betting choice.

The only other jockeys to win two consecutive Derbies were Isaac Murphy, on Riley and Kingman in 1890-91; Jimmy Winkfield, on His Eminence and Alan-A-Dale in 1901-02; and Ron Turcotte, on Riva Ridge and Secretariat in 1972-73.

“It’s every jockey’s dream to win a Derby,” Delahoussaye said. “But to win two in a row was just unbelievable.”

With better luck, Delahoussaye might have won the Derby a few more times. He finished second twice, once aboard Woodchopper, who was flying through the stretch in 1981 and just missed catching Pleasant Colony at the wire. In 1988, Delahoussaye may have been on the best horse, Risen Star, who won the other Triple Crown races, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, after finishing third at Churchill Downs. In 1992, Delahoussaye was set to ride A.P. Indy, one of the favorites, but a hoof injury resulted in the colt being scratched on the morning of the race. That fall, A.P. Indy, with Delahoussaye aboard, won the Breeders’ Cup Classic, clinching horse-of-the-year honors. On grass and dirt, with horses that could run short or long, Delahoussaye finished with seven Breeders’ Cup wins. He won 11 races worth $1 million or more.

In 1993, he was voted into the Hall of Fame at Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He got there by leaving the Midwest and moving to California in 1979, joining a salty jockey colony that already included Hall of Fame-caliber riders like Bill Shoemaker, Laffit Pincay, Sandy Hawley and Chris McCarron. Understated in his ways and speech, Delahoussaye was not intimidated. “If they give me good enough stock,” he often said, “I can ride with anybody.”

One of the reasons Eddie and Juanita Delahoussaye moved West was to find better schools. Their daughter Mandy had lost oxygen to her brain at birth and suffered from excruciating physical hardships, including curvature of the spine and a form of cerebral palsy.

Delahoussaye had been a kingpin in the Midwest, winning riding titles in Kentucky, Chicago and in his native Louisiana. In 1978, he led the country in wins with 384.

“He’s the best rider in the U.S.,” the late trainer, Brian Mayberry, said in 1992. “He does it all, and he does it with humility.”

Delahoussaye’s father, who was the street commissioner of New Iberia, La., owned horses, and Delahoussaye’s uncles trained them. At 10, weighing about 65 pounds, Delahoussaye was riding quarter horses through straightaways at outlaw bush tracks in Louisiana.

“If I ever hear of you not riding a horse 100% to win, I’ll give you a whipping,” his father told him.

By 14, Delahoussaye was riding horses around turns. In his 12th race, he rode his first thoroughbred winner, at Evangeline Downs in Louisiana.

“The quarter horses match races weren’t really riding,” he said. “It was just sticking and driving, but I loved it. Riding thoroughbreds was more exciting, because you had farther to go and you could rate them. But the quarter-horse match races helped me insofar as developing balance and coordination.”

Delahoussaye’s plans are uncertain, but he is likely to stay in racing.

“I doubt that I’ll try to train,” he said. “It’s a different game now, a much tougher game with the rising workers’ compensation costs and so forth. But we plan to stay in California, and I’ll find something. I’ve been going to [horse] sales for a long time now, helping people pick out horses, and I’ve had a pretty good success rate with the ones I’ve picked. I can still do a lot of that.”

Delahoussaye’s last win, it turned out, came on Aug. 25 at Del Mar, just a few days before his spill. He brought a filly, Real Paranoide, from 10th place to the wire with a patented late run. Just like Gato Del Sol, at the Derby 20 years before.