Aging Jockey Can’t Fix the Mistakes of His Past

Jose Amy, once among the most promising jockeys in the country, won’t be riding in any of the eight Breeders’ Cup races, or any of the other races on the card, Saturday at Belmont Park. Amy will be here, wistfully thinking about what might have been.

Because Amy held horses, keeping them from winning, when he was an upstart jockey from Puerto Rico in 1974 and 1975, he lost his New York license in 1980 and in effect was banned from riding in the continental U.S. for almost 24 years.

He rode in Puerto Rico for much of that time, and was reinstated in New York last year, but he is 52 now and considered an oddity when his name appears in the daily program.

“Jose Amy,” bettors say. “Is that the guy who ... ? “

Amy had five winless mounts last year. He has ridden in 54 races this year, having won five, with five seconds and two thirds.

Unlike most jockeys, Amy doesn’t have an agent, a business representative who prowls the backstretch, asking trainers for mounts. And the mounts he gets are hardly first-class horseflesh. Still ...

“I don’t know how long I’m going to be doing this, but I’m enjoying what I’m doing,” Amy says. “I’m very strong spiritually, and that helps. I regret what I did, but I think I deserve this second chance.”

In the 1970s, there was wholesale race-fixing at New York’s three major tracks -- Belmont, Saratoga and Aqueduct -- and authorities were slow-moving in their investigation.

Angel Cordero, a Hall of Famer who is now an agent for leading rider John Velazquez, was implicated but never convicted or suspended by the state. Sports Illustrated mentioned Cordero and other leading jockeys by name, and Cordero demanded an apology from the magazine, but he never got one and didn’t sue.

“I was the smallest fish in the bowl,” said Amy, who testified in the criminal trial of Con Errico, a former jockey. After less than six hours, the jury found Errico guilty of race fixing. He was sentenced to 10 years and fined $25,000.

Errico, who died in 1993, put the blame on Amy, saying after the verdict, “Amy was in the hot seat. To get out of it, he pointed the finger at me.”

Under oath, Amy mentioned Errico, Cordero and nine other top riders. Jacinto Vasquez, who was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1998, was suspended for a year by New York racing authorities in 1984.

The other day here, Amy recalled that someone had asked him to restrain horses at Aqueduct in 1974, when he was 19. Twice, he said, he refused.

“Then I started getting phone calls,” he said. “Physical threats. I was worried.”

Michael Hole, a jockey who had come from England to ride in the U.S., was found dead in a car on nearby Long Island. The cause of death was suicide by asphyxiation, but the theory lingers that Hole, a reluctant race-fixer, was a victim of foul play.

In March 1974, Amy caved in and took $1,500 to hold a horse. The fixers wanted the favorites to finish off the board, after they had bet the longshots in trifectas. If the longshots ran 1-2-3, there would be big payoffs.

For the next year, Amy said he took six more bribes of $1,500 apiece. The fee was more for more regular conspirators, some of the jockeys getting $7,000 a race.

Errico’s trial was in 1979. Amy finished out that year, won 150 races on a tough circuit and rode horses that earned $2.6 million. He rode John Henry to his first of 25 stakes wins.

Then in 1980, his license was revoked. Puerto Rico had reciprocity with tracks here, but Amy won a court case there and rode for about 15 years, winning 600 races by his estimate.

He also applied, unsuccessfully, four or five times for a jockey’s license in New York. In 2001, the state granted him a license to exercise horses. One of his boosters in finally getting a full-fledged riding license last year was Barry Schwartz, former chairman of the New York tracks. Dozens of trainers also backed Amy’s licensing bid.

“He was guilty of making a young man’s mistake, and after a while the punishment didn’t fit the crime,” trainer Mike Hushion said.

Amy has the body of a much younger rider. The muscles bulge, the frame is chiseled. Weight was never an enemy for the 5-foot-4 rider.

“I hope to get an agent, when the Aqueduct meet opens,” Amy said. “After I quit riding, I might become an agent myself. But riding horses is the only thing I know, and I’m going to keep with it until I can’t do it anymore. This is where I’ll die.”

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Barry Broad, a California lawyer who has been a lobbyist for the national Jockeys’ Guild for 11 years, resigned Monday. Broad said he had been disenchanted with testimony by Wayne L. Gertmenian, president of the financially troubled guild, at a congressional hearing last week.

“I am no longer comfortable working for the management of the guild as it’s now constituted,” Broad said.

Paul Makin, owner of Starcraft, a New Zealand-bred who has never run on dirt, said that he would pay an $800,000 supplementary fee for the horse to run in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“I know it’s a big risk,” Makin said.

The Classic is worth $4 million, plus $720,000 of Starcraft’s supplement. Makin could have run the 5-year-old horse in the $1.5-million Mile, a grass race, which would have cost a supplement of $300,000. The Daily Racing Form lists Starcraft at 10-1 on its morning line for the Classic.

A ligament injury has knocked longshot Miss Norman out of the Juvenile Fillies.