Back in the Saddle Broken bones and a damaged heart couldn’t break this jockey’s determined spirit. By Alison Stanton
G
allyn Mitchell is living proof that if you love what you are doing in life, nothing—not even a broken back and massive heart attack—will keep you from pursuing your dreams. From the time he was a little boy, Mitchell, 51, has been around horses. “Instead of playing ball, I went to the rodeo,” he says. When he was just 3 years old, he saw steeple racing on television for the first time. He turned to his parents and told them right then and there that when he got older, he wanted to race horses too. Mitchell competed in rodeo from the time he was 8 until he was 15.
His parents and family friends taught him the basics of horse racing, and at the age of 18, he began to work as a jockey. Mitchell’s career has been extremely successful; he has been racing at Turf Paradise in Phoenix for more than a decade, and is wellknown in the state of Washington, where he races during the summer. He’s the Emerald Downs’— Washington’s famed track—alltime leader in wins, stakes wins and purse earnings. And recently, he was inducted into the Washington Racing Hall of Fame. Last December, just two days before Christmas, Mitchell was ...continues on page 22
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