Valenzuela Gets 2004 Suspension

Only months after completing the best year of an erratically brilliant career, jockey Pat Valenzuela has been suspended for the rest of 2004 by the stewards at Santa Anita.

Unless Valenzuela successfully appeals the ruling, the California Horse Racing Board said Friday, he would not be eligible for reinstatement until 2005. Valenzuela, who will be 42 by then, may have ridden his last horse. This is the ninth time a suspension has interrupted a career in which he has ridden 3,545 winners, but which has been marred by at least four positive tests for cocaine or amphetamines.

Valenzuela did not return phone calls seeking comment. The stewards said that he had appeared twice before them since being suspended indefinitely Jan. 23, telling them that his latest marriage had crumbled, complaining about depression and saying that he had been attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The stewards -- Tom Ward, Pete Pedersen and Ingrid Fermin -- ruled off Valenzuela in January after he failed to come in for a mandatory drug test. He had phoned the stewards Jan. 22, saying that an ankle injury would prevent him from riding that day.

Under the terms of Valenzuela’s conditional riding contract, first issued at the end of 2001 after a positive drug test about 22 months before, he was to make himself available daily for possible testing.

Valenzuela’s relationship with his previous attorney ended early this year and he didn’t have legal representation during either of his two recent meetings with the stewards. Should he appeal Friday’s ruling to the racing board, the state body would refer the case to an administrative law judge. After a hearing, that judge would make a non-binding recommendation to the board.

Valenzuela didn’t ride for almost two years after his last positive drug test, but upon his return, he showed that he still knew how to bring home winners. In 2002, he won 221 races and his mounts earned $12.5 million, which ranked him seventh on the national money list.

Last year, his purses totaled $15.6 million, a career high and fifth-best in the nation. He ranked fourth with 287 wins and was among three finalists for an Eclipse Award.

Valenzuela also was the wins leader at all five of Southern California’s major meets -- Del Mar and two each at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park -- as he tied a record set by Chris McCarron in 1993.

Valenzuela got in trouble with the stewards for rough riding, however, and he was forced to sit out -- with the exception of some designated stakes races -- the first 13 days of the current Santa Anita meet. He returned to ride 10 winners, last riding Jan. 19, but he fired his agent a few days before he was a no-show for a drug test.

Valenzuela won the 1989 Kentucky Derby with Sunday Silence and won his seventh Breeders’ Cup race in October, riding Adoration to an upset win in the Distaff at Santa Anita. Valenzuela was 17 when he won the Santa Anita Derby with Codex in 1980.