Jockey Shows He’s No Yellow Rose

Cindy Robinson watched from a tent near the finish line at Pimlico as her son, jockey Jeremy Rose, and Afleet Alex flashed under the wire at the Preakness.

She hadn’t seen what had happened about an eighth of a mile before. Afleet Alex, forced into running up on the heels of a horse who had veered into his path, stumbled, his nose coming about eight inches from hitting the ground. Had the colt not recovered, a likely scenario would have had Afleet Alex and Rose sprawled across the track, in the path of 12 horses charging from behind.

“It was much later before I realized what had happened,” Robinson said Thursday. “At the [winners’] press conference, I started putting all the pieces together.”

About 24 hours later, Robinson watched a taped replay of the Preakness. She thought she was prepared for the run out of the far turn, when Scrappy T, startled by a left-handed crack from Ramon Dominguez’s whip, came out about three lanes, leaving Afleet Alex and Rose with no place to go.

“Watching that almost-fall still put a knot in my stomach,” Robinson said. “It was pretty wicked.”

Tim Ritchey, the trainer of Afleet Alex, is a Pittsburgh native who still roots for the Steelers. The day after the Preakness, Ritchey referred to Afleet Alex’s balancing act as “the immaculate recovery,” a takeoff on “the immaculate reception” -- sportscaster Myron Cope’s dubbing of Franco Harris’ extraordinary, game-winning catch of a deflected pass in the Steelers’ playoff win over the Oakland Raiders in 1972.

“If what happened didn’t happen, we win by 15 lengths,” Rose said. “Then by now people are saying, ‘Holy [cow], what a horse.’ As it was, we still won by almost five lengths.”

Rose talks like a rider who still feels he has much to prove in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes. Scrappy T’s trainer, Robby Bailes, has taken a pass, leaving his horse in Maryland, but Giacomo, the upstart Kentucky Derby winner and the third-place finisher in the Preakness, will be running. The rest of the 11-horse field is made up of Andromeda’s Hero, who was eighth in the Derby, and eight new shooters, horses who will be making their first Triple Crown appearances.

Rose, 26, won an Eclipse Award for best apprentice in 2001, when he won 312 races, and he has been the leading rider at Delaware Park and Laurel Park in Maryland, but those are second-tier tracks. Rose’s work with Afleet Alex -- he has ridden him in all but one of his races, and been aboard for his seven wins -- and in particular his ability to stay aloft in the Preakness, has given him a new platform.

“You know the [introduction to the] old ABC show?,” Ritchey said, referring to the “Wide World of Sports.” “The one with the skier going off the ramp. You’ll see the rerun of the Preakness for 10 years, or longer. We had the thrill of victory instead of the agony of defeat.”

For the Belmont, billed as the rubber match between Afleet Alex and Giacomo, Rose is in much the same position as Stewart Elliott, an unheralded, small-track jockey who rode Smarty Jones to wins in the Derby and Preakness last year. Then they finished second to Birdstone here, missing out on the first Triple Crown sweep since Affirmed in 1978.

Like Elliott, Rose has little experience riding at Belmont Park, the only 1 1/2 -mile racing oval in the country. Rose said he has ridden about a dozen races here, and he’ll ride some more this week, but none of them will prepare him for the 1 1/2 -mile Belmont Stakes.

Rose’s muse is Afleet Alex.

“He gives me confidence -- I just ride him,” said the jockey, who’s barely 5 feet. “He’s different than Smarty Jones, I think, because this horse listens completely to me. Stewie [Elliott] did nothing wrong last year in the Belmont, he did everything he could, but Smarty was that kind of horse [headstrong], and then they got pushed by other horses and got beat in the stretch.”

Rose envisions an early stalking position with Afleet Alex.

“He should be comfortable doing that,” he said. “I’d like to make our move on the [last] turn, and be about four or five lengths ahead at the quarter pole. If my horse has relaxed early, then I don’t think there’s anybody in there who can out-kick us in the stretch.”

Cindy Robinson’s only child wrestled in high school, in central Pennsylvania, and would have liked to continue the sport in college, perhaps at Penn State, Syracuse or Ohio State. But the NCAA changed the rules, to a minimum weight of 125 pounds, and that effectively ended Rose’s career on the mat.

“He was an honest 103-pounder,” said Rose’s mother, an equine specialist for Purina Mills. “He came to me one day and said he’d like to try becoming a jockey. We thought we were sending him to a jockeys’ school in Puerto Rico, but after he got down there they gave him a job breaking 2-year-olds. It was just as well, he learned a lot about horses.”

After nine months in Puerto Rico, Purina and Robinson were able to connect Rose with trainer Mickey Petro at Delaware Park. His horsemanship education was lifted to the next level, and on Sept. 23, 2000, he rode his first race, with a horse named Dalys Princess, and notched his first win. Robinson was there, of course.

“We were all pretty nervous,” she said. “The horse was a maiden, but Jeremy won by about nine lengths. He’s blessed with something that’s taken him along, knock on wood.”

It took Eddie Arcaro, the Hall of Famer, about 90 mounts before he scored his first victory. Arcaro won a record-tying six Belmont Stakes, but it took him three losing mounts before Whirlaway, in 1941, gave him his first one.

With Afleet Alex, Rose can hit a home run on his first try. All the colt has to do is keep his nose off the ground, and concentrate on the grindstone.

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Trainer Greg Gilchrist named Edgar Prado, the leading rider at Belmont, to ride Lost In The Fog in Saturday’s $200,000 Riva Ridge Stakes here.

Prado replaces Russell Baze, who suffered a broken collarbone in a spill at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif., on Wednesday.