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JOHNNY VELASQUEZ
Johnny Velázquez Cool, calm, consummate Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth in the Caribbean, is fueled by its tourism, rum, coffee, and pharmaceutical industries. Horseracing is a very minor industry, yet this 100-by-35-mile island is linked to some of the very best that our sport has to offer: native-bred Camarero, winner of 56 consecutive races; European champion and leading international sire Roberto, who was named after World Series MVP Roberto Clemente; 1976 Eclipse champion three-year-old colt and Kentucky Derby/Belmont Stakes winner Bold Forbes; Mister Frisky, undefeated winner of 16 races going into the 1990 Kentucky Derby; Angel Cordero Jr., Hall of Fame jockey; and John “Johnny” Velázquez, the leading active (and fourth all-time) jockey in North America by lifetime earnings. By Frances J Karon who had begun the school, only about 13 made it through. Velázquez was 18 when he competed in his first race, on January 1, 1990, and he rode a winner, Rodas, two days later. That same day, one of his mounts fell and he sprained his wrist, forcing him to sit out a few days. The Canóvanas track only raced three times a week as it was, so by the time he left Puerto Rico in March for New York, he had ridden in about 41 races, registering seven winners. Angel and Marjorie Cordero opened their home to Velázquez, who stayed with them for his first five months in New York. His command of English was limited. He had learned the basics in school, but had few conversational skills. “When I came here I knew a lot of stuff, a lot of words but I couldn’t put it together,” he says. “It was very hard for me to speak and und erstand, because by the time you would say a sentence I was lost already, or I know one word and didn’t know any other words in the sentence.” Velázquez practiced by watching Disney movies and other kids’ TV with Cordero’s youngest child, Canela. “I used to write everything down,” he says, “get my dictionary, start looking up the words and how to say them.” Cordero, who began riding in 1960 and was already a Hall of Famer and three-time Eclipse Award winner, gave the apprentice a complete overhaul on the track, too. Velázquez says, “I had to learn everything
the way they did it here. It’s weird because nobody teaches you to learn the jockeys or learn the trainers – the competition, basically. But you have to learn that very quickly, and that was one of the key things for me, to learn the style of the jockeys so when you compete at least you can anticipate what they’re going to do. I never thought about that before. There’s many, many things that I wouldn’t hav e come up with that I had to learn. It was very
interesting to know all those things early in my career and then try to put them in place and understand why I needed to learn them. It makes you better understand why and how the other guys do what they do, and you can give your horse a better ride.” The Puerto Rican jockeys grew close as friends and competitors, and their destinies were intertwined when they went postward in a nondescript event, a maiden claimer at Aqueduct with a purse of $12,000, on
Todd Pletcher congratulates Velázquez on his first Derby win
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