After Bad Falls, They’re Due for a Good Spring

When the horse racing gods get around to passing out the good luck this Triple Crown racing season, it would seem only fair that Team Brother Derek be first in line. No black cats allowed.

Any good fortune would be justified in Saturday’s 69th running of the Santa Anita Derby, a $750,000 race and one of the main tests for Kentucky Derby hopefuls. It would also seem fair if the four-leaf clovers remained in line for the Kentucky Derby itself May 6, the Preakness two weeks later and the Belmont Stakes three weeks after that.

As competitive as the sport is, most would agree that it is time for good things to happen to trainer Dan Hendricks and jockey Alex Solis, two of the main players in the quest to make Brother Derek the king of the 3-year-olds this year.

When Brother Derek loads into the gate about 2:40 Saturday afternoon as the overwhelming favorite, the man watching from the stands in a wheelchair and the man in the saddle will each be 21 months from tragic moments that changed their lives.

On July 7, 2004, Hendricks headed to Hemet to look at some horses.

Then 45, he had grown up in the hills around Rancho Santa Fe, had been an assistant for nine years to Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella, and had saddled several stakes winners after setting out on his own.

He was making a decent living as a thoroughbred trainer, but the kind of notoriety and financial reward that come with Triple Crown success had eluded him.

As his three sons had grown -- they are now 10, 13 and 15 -- he had resumed a hobby he’d stopped when they were younger: motocross riding.

“It’s like what they do at Anaheim Stadium, or the Coliseum,” he says now. “But we did it on outdoor tracks.”

On that Wednesday in July, Hendricks decided to stop, on his way home, at a Riverside area track called Star West.

“It’s a maintained track,” Hendricks says. “It costs you to go and ride. It’s kind of like going to play golf. You meet your friends and you go out riding. I was going out for a few hours and go home.”

He was alone.

“I’ve said this in the past. I could not have lived with having this happen to one of my boys,” he says.

During his ride, he hit a bump wrong, lost his balance and landed wrong, suffering an injury that paralyzed him from the waist down.

“I knew right away,” he says. “It is a sensation that is hard to describe. When you don’t feel any pain, and you can’t feel anything, you know what happened.”

On July 23, 16 days after his accident, Hendricks rested in a hospital in La Jolla while Solis, his friend and usual first choice to ride his horses, climbed into the saddle of Golden K K, a 4-year-old filly. It was a Friday night, the first night card of the 2004 Del Mar meeting.

“I had heard about Dan right after his accident,” Solis says. “I got the call, but at first, we weren’t sure what would happen. For a while, it was just day to day. We didn’t know he was paralyzed.”

Solis had his own opinion about motorcycles.

“When I was 17, I was riding one in Florida with a friend,” he says. “He was kind of messing around and we crashed. I scraped my hands and knees, but when I got up and looked at him, he had broken his leg, and the bone had come through the skin. That was the last time I rode a motorcycle.”

But what he does for a living is probably more dangerous, as evidenced by some serious spills, including one during which he literally flew 25 feet into the air.

“I landed on my head in that one,” he says. “When they were loading me into the ambulance, they asked me if I knew where I was. I said, ‘Sure, I’m at Santa Anita.’ Well, it was Hollywood Park.”

During the twilight hours of that July 23 race, a horse named Vegas Folly crowded Golden K K at the three-sixteenths pole. Golden K K clipped the heels of Vegas Folly and horse and jockey went down.

“I knew I had broken my back right away,” Solis says. “I told the people taking care of me, ‘I broke my back.’ I knew because I had never felt that kind of pain before.”

For Solis, feeling pain was a blessing. He was not paralyzed but had fractured two tiny wings that hold a disk in place. He had the option of taking a long time off to let things heal, or to have a fairly complicated and risky surgery that would, if successful, hasten his return.

He chose the surgery, his decision both emotional and philosophical.

“Something like this opens your mind and soul to make you think clearly of what you want out of life,” he says. “For me, to think about not coming back, that was like being dead. If I don’t take the risk of doing what I love, if I don’t have the guts to do that, then it is like killing myself.”

So there they were, trainer and jockey, in La Jolla medical facilities, fighting to get back to what and who they had been.

By mid-August, Solis was well enough to visit Hendricks.

“It was difficult,” Solis says. “It was hard to see a friend, lying there, all sorts of things hooked up to him. I didn’t say that much. He was positive. He did most of the talking. He asked about my accident.”

Hendricks says, “We looked good together, me in a chair, him all stiff and sore. I don’t think he was in a halo [neck brace].”

It was not until March 2005 that Hendricks, shopping for owner Cecil Peacock, purchased Brother Derek for $275,000. And it was not until Brother Derek beat 2-year-old sensation Stevie Wonderboy, now injured and out of the Triple Crown chase, and followed that up with a victory in the Santa Catalina Stakes on March 4 that the racing world took note and the story line of the comebacks of Hendricks and Solis took shape.

Solis, one of the top jockeys in the world, has ridden top horses, won many graded races and won Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup races.

Hendricks has never saddled a Triple Crown entry. In fact, he has never saddled a horse in the Santa Anita Derby.

But the current bond in Team Brother Derek couldn’t be more obvious.

“This horse is a blessing for all of us,” Solis says.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

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Santa Anita Derby Field

The field is set for the Santa Anita Derby, a $750,000 race at 1 1/8 miles. Scheduled as the sixth race on Saturday’s 11-race card, the Derby is the last major California stakes for 3-year-olds heading to the Kentucky Derby on May 6. There will also be a $1-million guaranteed pick six pool.

*--* PP Horse Jockey Trainer ML 1. A.P. Warrior Corey Nakatani John Sherriffs 7-2 2. Brother Derek Alex Solis Dan Hendricks 3-5 3. Wildfang Omar Berrio John M. Meairs 50-1 4. Indy Wildcat Tyler Baze Paula Capestro 30-1 5. Sacred Light Aaron Gryder David Hofmans 9-2 6. Point Determined Rafael Bejarano Bob Baffert 4-1

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