Posted on Tue, Apr. 29, 2008

Two-time Derby winner proving he's got it — again

Rider of reinvention

By Maryjean Wall

MWALL@HERALD-LEADER.COM

DAVID PERRY

Kent Desormeaux patted Jade's Revenge after they won the Ben Ali Stakes during last year's Keeneland spring meet. Desormeaux won 22 races this spring and earned his first Keeneland riding title. 2007 file photo by David Perry | Staff

Kent Desormeaux has long been a man of new beginnings, a two-time Derby-winning jockey who periodically has had to reignite his career.

His ride on Big Brown in Derby 134 would cap off Desormeaux's latest comeback if he were to win the race Saturday on this probable favorite.

It would place him in an elite group of jockeys, currently numbering seven, who have won the race three or more times.

No one would be surprised if Desormeaux joined this group, for no one in the sport has ever questioned his superb talent. But neither was anyone surprised when Desormeaux abandoned his longtime base in California two years ago.

He had fallen into a slump. Where Desormeaux once had led the jockey standings in southern California 11 times, he found himself unable to ride enough winners to get into the top 10 lists.

Gone was that decade of the 1990s when no one in California rode more winners than Desormeaux. Over his final five seasons on that lucrative circuit, the jockey was making so little money that he had to spend part of each season riding in Japan -- just to make ends meet, so he wouldn't lose his house.

"I was stalemated in California," Desormeaux said recently at Keeneland, where he turned the tide of recent seasons and topped the rider standings.

Keeneland must have seemed like old times for Desormeaux, 38, with him riding winner after winner over the three-week meet.

Throughout his long career he consistently broke records: the youngest, at age 25, to win 3,000 races; the youngest to crack $100 million in horses' earnings. He broke Steve Cauthen's record as an apprentice, then reset the standard of Chris McCarron's record number of winners in a season.

He has won Eclipse Awards, is in the Hall of Fame, and visited the Derby winner's circle with Real Quiet (1998) and Fusaichi Pegasus (2000).

"It's a gut-wrenching experience," Desormeaux said about the down times. "Once you're leader of the pack, it sucks being in the middle somewhere. You don't get used to it. You just deal with it. You grit your teeth and do what you do and hopefully they'll notice you again."

He's been getting noticed and reinvigorating his career at various times since 1996. He had done it so often that in 2005 the Daily Racing Form observed Desormeaux was poised "for another one of his fabled career comebacks."

In the latest comeback begun in 2006, Desormeaux went back east where he was so successful when he burst into prominence in 1987. That was the year he had won an Eclipse as the outstanding apprentice, riding mainly in Maryland. In this 2006 occasion of starting over, Desormeaux headed to New York.

The force was with him. He joined up with trainer Bill Mott.

"Honestly, I think it has a lot to do with acquiring Bill Mott's stable," Desormeaux said. "The more I win the more I'm desired, and it just snowballs."

"He's the little girl with the curl," Mott said at Churchill Downs. "When he's good he's real good. When he's in the groove he can be very, very good."

And when he's bad?

Mott smiled.

No need to answer.

"It seems to me like most riders go through those cycles," Mott said. "Momentum, confidence level, the stock they're riding. I think when they start getting on good horses, they start doing well. They get in the groove."

But few at the most elite levels have to keep reinventing themselves every few years, as Desormeaux seems to do.

Mott said he needed a regular rider to replace Jerry Bailey after his retirement. He hadn't used Desormeaux much in the past but he wanted someone he could call on so he wouldn't have to scramble for a jockey every time he entered a horse.

The Mott/Desormeaux combination has done a lot to boost the jockey's stock -- again -- with other racing stables.

Down in Maurice, La., where Desormeaux grew up and learned to ride as a teenager, his brother, Keith, mulled over Kent's latest career rejuvenation.

"I was thinking the same thing," Keith said. "What has made the difference? Because the talent has always been there."

Keith, who is a horse trainer, thinks the reasons are more than the typical, cyclical nature of the business.

"He's a very brash young man and his attitude, his brashness, is better associated with the East Coast horsemen," Keith reasoned.

Kent possibly would agree. At Keeneland, he talked about how success as a jockey comes in good part from campaigning with owners and trainers: always being "on," always smiling, meeting and greeting.

"And can I say that always, during 22 years of riding, I was campaigning? No," Desormeaux said. "Physically I felt fine. But I didn't always remember to say hello."

Kent's and Keith's mother, Brenda Desormeaux, said her jockey son "has always been dedicated to whatever he decided he wanted to do, and I think the fact that he's back as No. 1 proves that."

Said Keith about his brother's latest comeback: "Whether Big Brown wins it or not, he's back on track."

For Desormeaux, that's the place to be.