Pincay’s Problems Mount After Spill

The jockeys’ room at Santa Anita has lost two Hall of Fame riders -- Chris McCarron and Eddie Delahoussaye -- to retirement in the last eight months, and the riding future of a third Hall of Famer, Laffit Pincay, is being questioned after his painful spill last Saturday.

Pincay, 56, had hoped to resume riding this week, and in fact had accepted six mounts on today’s eight-race card, but Thursday it was announced that he will be sidelined indefinitely after X-rays showed that he broke two bones in his neck, narrowly avoiding permanent paralysis. Pincay, according to his son, Laffit Pincay III, will be in a halo cast for eight weeks.

“We expect a full recovery,” the younger Pincay said, “and a decision on his career will be made at a future date.”

Doctors could well tell Pincay what Delahoussaye hated to hear from his doctors in January. Delahoussaye, 51, suffered a neck injury in a spill at Del Mar in August, and was advised to retire. He recently announced that he had become a bloodstock agent and is developing a clientele interested in buying horses.

“I was told that if I had another bad spill, I would be in big trouble,” said Delahoussaye, who won 6,380 races and suffered at least five concussions during a 36-year career.

McCarron, who’ll be 48 at the end of the month, retired in June and was named Wednesday as the general manager of Santa Anita. Like many jockeys, McCarron suffered a number of serious injuries -- he broke two legs and an arm in a spill at Hollywood Park in 1990 -- but wasn’t forced into retirement by a serious accident.

“The flame inside me just wasn’t what it used to be,” said McCarron, who won 7,141 races, sixth on the all-time list.

Pincay is atop that list, by plenty. He broke Bill Shoemaker’s record of 8,833 wins, which had stood since Shoemaker retired in 1990, with a win at Hollywood Park on Dec. 10, 1999, and has persistently pushed on since then, as hungry and powerful as ever. He is second in the standings at the current Santa Anita meet, with 52 wins, and had won with the next-to-last mount he had Saturday. Pincay, with 9,531 wins in 39 years, had talked confidently about reaching 10,000. Pat Day, 49, is the closest active rider to Pincay with 8,420 wins.

Pincay, who returned home from the hospital Thursday, suffered two fractures to the second cervical bone in his neck. “After the application of the halo, everything is where [the doctors] want it to be, and my dad is in good spirits,” the jockey’s son said.

The spill, in Saturday’s fifth race, at 6 1/2 furlongs down Santa Anita’s grassy hillside course, at first looked like a bad one. Pincay’s horse was Trampus Too, a 6-year-old gelding running his first race in five months.

Running on the outside, Trampus Too was vying for the lead when another horse, Rainman’s Request, came into his path. The horses clipped hoofs, and Trampus Too fell, unseating Pincay and barely missing him as he wheeled forward, got up and ran off. Rainman’s Request finished second but was disqualified by the stewards because of the interference and placed last. His rider, Tony Farina -- a French jockey who has been riding at Santa Anita this winter -- was handed a seven-day suspension but has appealed the penalty.

In the track’s first-aid room, Pincay was treated for facial scrapes and released. But for him to take off the rest of his mounts that day, the pain must have been acute. He was scheduled to ride in two stakes races, worth a combined $600,000. One of his mounts, Redattore, was ridden to victory by Alex Solis in the $400,000 Jimmy Kilroe Mile.

Pincay took off his mounts Sunday and Wednesday, the next two racing days, and was not scheduled to ride Thursday. He was reexamined this week after the pain persisted.

With Pincay out, and McCarron and Delahoussaye having taken up other pursuits, the Santa Anita jockeys’ room is still well-stocked with top riders, albeit reduced to two Hall of Famers, Gary Stevens and Julie Krone.

After 3 1/2 years’ retirement, Krone returned to riding in November. Stevens, who suffers from arthritic knees, also temporarily retired for 10 months in 1999-2000. Recurring knee problems forced him to abandon the Del Mar meet last summer, and after riding in the Breeders’ Cup in late October he recently returned to action following three months of work on the movie “Seabiscuit.”

In the film, he plays the legendary jockey George Woolf, who was 36 when he died in a spill at Santa Anita 57 years ago.