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Santos, Jose
Profession: Jockeys; Athletes; Equestrians;
Sports people
Biography from Current
Biography (2003) Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights
reserved.
Often mentioned along with such horse-riding greats as
Angel Cordero, Willie Shoemaker, and Steve Cauthen, and known for his
tactical patience during races and his strong finishes, Jose Santos is
one of the most accomplished jockeys in horse-racing history. Santos
was born into poverty in Chile. He came to the United States in 1984
in search of racing glory and quickly established himself as one of
the country's best jockeys; for four consecutive years later that
decade, he led the nation in purse-money earned. In 1988 he won the
Eclipse Award, which recognizes excellence in thoroughbred racing.
During the 1990s he fared less well, both because of marital
difficulties that affected his concentration and his inability to
obtain standout mounts. Then, in 2003, after decades of strenuous
practice and two career-threatening injuries, Santos achieved a
long-held dream: aboard a New York State-bred three-year-old named
Funny Cide, he won the Kentucky Derby, the most prestigious event in
thoroughbred horse racing in the U.S. and the first leg of the elusive
Triple Crown. Two weeks later--after weathering accusations that he
had used an illegal device to goad the horse during the Derby--Santos,
again riding Funny Cide, won that year's Preakness Stakes and sent
racing aficionados and many others into a state of great excitement,
as he and the gelding now had the chance to become only the 12th
horse-and-rider team in the history of U.S. racing to win the Triple
Crown in a single season. Although Santos and Funny Cide failed in
their attempt, placing third at the rain-soaked 2003 Belmont Stakes,
the huge crowd that witnessed the race gave them a standing ovation.
"I never see a horse get beat and there they were still cheering
for me," Santos told Beth Harris for the Associated Press (June
7, 2003, on-line), as posted on the MSNBC Web site. To date, Santos
has compiled more than 3,000 victories in the United States. In 2003,
in voting by noted sports journalists and Hall of Fame athletes and
coaches, he won ESPN's ESPY Award for best jockey.
The oldest of the nine children (10, according to some
sources) of Manuel Santos, an unsuccessful jockey, and his wife, Jose
Santos was born on April 26, 1961 in Concepcion, the second-largest
city in Chile. Three of his six brothers have also pursued careers in
horse racing. Santos grew up with his siblings in a small house with
dirt floors and no indoor plumbing, close to a racetrack, Club Hipico
de Concepcion. The first horse in his life was Yupanque, who pulled
the cart from which the family sold food on the streets of Concepcion.
Sometimes, Bill Finley reported for the New York Times (May 12, 2003),
there was not enough for young Jose to eat, and he had to beg from
passersby. At eight years of age, Santos began working as a horse
groom, cleaning and brushing racing mounts. He attended school only
through the fourth or fifth grade. As a young teenager he watched on a
friend's television as the mighty Secretariat, with rider Ron Turcotte,
won the 1973 Kentucky Derby.
By age 14, weighing just 85 pounds (less than what 95
percent of boys that age weighed in the U.S. in 2000), Santos was
riding thoroughbred mounts in races at Club Hipico de Concepcion. In
races with as many as 20 horses, he learned to pace his mounts and
save their stamina for strong homestretch runs. At 15 he watched on TV
the 1978 Kentucky Derby, in which Steve Cauthen rode Affirmed to
victory. (Finishing first in the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes as
well, Affirmed won the Triple Crown that year, thus becoming the 11th
and last horse to win all three races in the same year.) Inspired by
Cauthen's performance, Santos began dreaming of riding in prestigious
horse races in the U.S. "I looked at Steve Cauthen and I say,
'Ooh, he's so young. I want to do that,'" Santos told John Rolfe
and Pablo DeMartini for Sport (June 1987). "I tell my mother,
'Mamma, some day I go to the United States and ride with the
best.'" One day in 1978, after Yupanque pulled the Santos family
to the Concepcion airport, the 17-year-old Jose flew from Chile to
Colombia, having accepted a contract to race there for $200 a month
($100, according to some sources). "That was a lot of money for
me," he told Pat Forde for the Louisville, Kentucky,
Courier-Journal (May 4, 2003, on-line).
Santos spent roughly five years in Colombia, honing
his craft--and developing bad habits off the track. "I was making
a lot of money, and I spent all of it in the blink of an eye," he
recalled to Tim Layden for Sports Illustrated (May 26, 2003).
"Alcohol, cocaine. You name it, I did it. Lots of it." In
Colombia Santos met his future first wife, Maria Castaneda, three of
whose brothers were jockeys in the U.S. When Maria took a job with the
Florida State Racing Commission, in 1984, Santos followed her to the
States. Layden wrote that Santos arrived at Miami International
Airport with "world-class riding skills and a crippling [cocaine]
habit." However, before leaving the plane, Santos "vowed
that he would never do drugs again"--and, by his own account,
never has.
In Miami, Santos--who spoke virtually no English
then--made early-morning rounds of the barns and horse sheds at Calder
Race Course, seeking to persuade a horse trainer or owner to give him
a chance to ride. When Santos did find mounts, he was so desperate to
win, because of his frequent hunger and lack of money, that he was
often overly aggressive during races. "I was pushing everybody
out of my way," the jockey recalled to Tom Pedulla for USA Today
(May 12, 2003). "I was fouling two and three horses a day. I was
getting suspended all the time." A good opportunity came Santos's
way when Angel Salinas, a Chilean trainer, paired him with a young
horse named No Plan. Santos soon piloted No Plan to a series of
victories. In the summer of 1984, after accepting an offer to ride for
the trainer Philip Simms, he won 69 races (on various mounts) and tied
for first place in Calder's rider standings. At a 50-day meet at the
Gulfstream Park racetrack, in Hallandale, Florida, Santos set a record
by winning 61 times. He then won leading-rider honors at the Hialeah
track, also in southern Florida, by notching 53 victories. "The
word began to spread throughout the racing world about the most
impressive and promising young rider since Steve Cauthen burst onto
the scene in 1976," John Rolfe and Pablo DeMartini wrote.
Santos's trademark strengths as a rider included patience under
pressure: he refrained from urging his mounts to unsustainable speeds
too early in races, thus enabling them to reserve energy for their
final sprints. Santos also became known for his strong finishes and
his possession of what is commonly referred to in the horse-racing
world as "soft hands," riding in a relaxed way that in turn
relaxes the horse. "The key to [riding] is mental," Santos
told Rolfe and DeMartini. "A horse can immediately sense the mood
you are in by the way you hold the reins or how you move your feet in
the stirrups. The calmer you are, the more the horse will relax and
run naturally."
In 1985 Santos moved to New York State. The following
year he was the nation's leading money winner among all jockeys,
taking in more than $11 million while winning more than 300 races.
(Jockeys keep only a small percentage of the purse money they
win--around 10 percent--and must give a portion of that amount to
their agents, as well as to other employees, such as the valets who
take care of the horses. According to Beth Burwinkel in the
Courier-Journal [April 22, 2002], the average jockey earns less than
$40,000 a year before expenses.) In each of the next three years,
Santos again led all jockeys nationally in purse total. Along with
winning more than $12 million in 1987, Santos ended the legendary
Angel Cordero's run of 11 straight riding titles at New York State's
historic Saratoga Race Course; he also competed in his first Kentucky
Derby, riding Cryptoclearance to a fourth-place finish. In 1988 Santos
won 370 races, earned a record-setting total of more than $14.5
million for the year, and was honored with the Eclipse Award as the
nation's top jockey. (Voters from the National Thoroughbred Racing
Association, the National Turf Writers Association, and the Daily
Racing Form select the winner of that award.) According to statistics
from The American Racing Manual, as quoted on infoplease.com, Santos
won 285 races in 1989, and his leading purse earnings for the year
totaled $13.8 million.
In 1990 Santos won two prestigious Breeders' Cup
races, aboard Fly So Free and Meadow Star, respectively. Later that
same year he opted to move to California, a decision that Bill Finley
characterized as a "tactical blunder," as the California
thoroughbred racing circuit "has a history of being inhospitable
to New York riders." Indeed, Santos struggled on the West Coast
and watched his earnings fall to 50 percent of the previous year's.
Though Santos returned to New York after less than a year in
California, "it was too late," Finley opined. "His
momentum was gone." Bad luck followed. In the spring of 1992,
Santos's left shoulder blade cracked when his horse fell, after one of
its legs buckled; his recovery took five weeks. Then, the following
July, while racing at Belmont Park, in Elmont, on Long Island, New
York, he was involved in a terrible accident in which his horse and
two others collided and crashed to the ground with their riders. The
potential for injury in such spills is huge: on average, thoroughbred
horses weigh 1,100 pounds, about nine times as much as the average
jockey, who tips the scales at no more than 115. (Some thoroughbreds
weigh as much as 1,450 pounds.) Santos, who stands about five feet two
inches and weighs 110 pounds, emerged from the Belmont collision with
a broken collarbone, hip, and right arm; the repair of the arm
required a graft of bone (from his undamaged hip), two pins, and 14
screws. "I stayed in bed 21 days in one position, I couldn't move
to the side . . . ," Santos recalled to Joseph Durso for the New
York Times (November 29, 1992). "I spent the summer watching TV
and taking therapy and wondering when I'd come back." By the end
of 1992, Santos had resumed racing.
The rider's slump continued, however. The injuries
Santos had sustained, coupled with a difficult divorce from his first
wife, took a toll on his racing. In the early to mid-1990s, he became
widely regarded as a jockey "who would not take chances and did
not have his head in the game," as Finley wrote. "He seemed
depressed," the trainer Phil Johnson told Finley. "He didn't
have the upbeat attitude that he has now. He was a downer to be
around." During this time Santos found mounts for the Kentucky
Derby, in 1993 and 1996, and the Preakness Stakes, in 1997, but
finished no better than seventh in any of those races. (Santos posted
better results in the Belmont Stakes; disregarding mediocre
performances in that event in 1992 and 1995, he finished second aboard
Kissin Kris in 1993; fourth aboard Signal Tap in 1994; and second
aboard Skip Away in 1996.)
His troubles notwithstanding, Santos never succumbed
to despair. "If you knew Jose, you would never question his
character," the jockey Richard Migliore told Finley. "The
fact that he has overcome so much, from his injuries to the times when
his business [as a rider] was so slow, tells you something about him.
It would have been so easy for him to give up. Instead, he worked so
hard to get back to the top."
In 1999 Santos won his first Triple Crown race,
crossing the wire aboard Lemon Drop Kid in the Belmont Stakes.
Nevertheless, for three years beginning in 2000, he tried in vain to
find a mount for any Triple Crown race but one. Acquiring a horse for
an important race depends on various factors unrelated to a jockey's
ability as a rider, among them connections to owners and trainers.
Referring to such occupational difficulties, the trainer Kenny McPeek,
who has on occasion hired Santos to race horses, told Forde,
"Sometimes you're just not the favorite flavor. That doesn't mean
you're not talented. [Santos] is just rocksolid, very steady. If I
called and said, 'Hey, Jose, we're going to breeze one at 5:30
[a.m.],' he was johnny on the spot." ("Breezing" refers
to running a horse in practice and warm-up heats.) Santos's
difficulties were compounded when, in the spring of 2001, he fell from
a horse and shattered his right wrist, an injury that required
reconstructive surgery. During his five-month recuperation, Santos's
second wife, Rita, helped him avoid gaining weight, by walking three
miles with him daily. (Since rules govern the precise number of pounds
each racehorse may carry, excessive weight gain can ruin a jockey's
career.) Santos finished that year with a career-worst 68 victories,
bringing in less than $4 million in purse money.
In early 2002 Mike Sellitto, a retired New York City
police officer turned jockey's agent, decided to work with Santos.
(Santos had been represented by several different agents in the
preceding years.) "The people who worked for [Santos] prior to me
were good people," Sellito told Finley, "but there has to be
good chemistry between the rider and the agent. You also have to have
the customers. [Santos] has a whole lot of talent and always has. It
was up to me to put him in the right spot so he could perform."
With Sellito acquiring good mounts for him, a once-again healthy
Santos returned to his outstanding form, winning 176 races and pulling
in nearly $12 million in 2002. Santos has credited Sellito with
helping to turn his riding career around. Among the highlights in
2002, Santos rode the longshot Volponi to victory in the prestigious
Breeders' Cup Classic, held in Arlington Heights, Illinois. That win
was his seventh in the more than four dozen Breeders' Cup races in
which he had participated. (In addition to two victories in 1990, his
other first-place finishes, in four of the eight kinds of Breeders'
Cup competitions, occurred in 1986, 1987, 1989, and 1997. First run in
1984, the Breeders' Cup championships offer the highest single-race
purse prizes in the world.)
In 2002 Santos was introduced to Funny Cide, a
muscular, chestnut gelding bred in New York State; his owners, a
syndicate of 10, included six high-school friends from Sackets Harbor,
New York, who had bought Funny Cide for $75,000--a typical price for
such a purchase. In August of that year, Funny Cide's trainer, Barclay
Tagg, hired Santos to take the horse for a run; afterward, the jockey
told Tagg that Funny Cide was the best two-year-old he had ever
mounted. Like other geldings, or castrated animals, Funny Cide is said
to be more focused on running than are most potential stud
thoroughbreds, and he will probably race for a greater number of
years. On September 8, 2000, in the gelding's first contest (a
so-called maiden race, against horses that had either never won a race
or had never raced before), Funny Cide won by 15 lengths. Santos then
rode the horse to two more first-place victories, and then fifth-,
third-, and second-place finishes, the last behind the colt Empire
Maker at the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct Race Track, in the New York
City borough of Queens, on April 12, 2003.
On May 3, 2003 Santos rode Funny Cide in the Kentucky
Derby. The event marked Santos's seventh attempt at winning the Derby,
a 11/4-mile race that has been held annually at Churchill Downs, in
Lexington, Kentucky, since 1875. Competing against 15 other
three-year-old horses, Funny Cide defeated the favored Empire Maker by
13/4 lengths and became the first gelding to win the Derby since 1929.
When he won, Santos told Tim Layden, a flood of memories flashed
before his eyes. "It was like when you rewind a tape and play it
forward fast," he said. "I saw my daddy teaching me to ride,
I saw the bad things in Colombia, the injuries, the people who helped
me come back. I saw everything."
One week later, in the midst of the afterglow of the
greatest achievement of his racing life, Santos's victory was called
into question. On May 10, 2003 the Miami Herald published a photo
(which had run earlier in several newspapers) showing, in close-up,
one of Santos's hands as Funny Cide crossed the finish line in the
Derby; along with a whip handle, there appeared to be another
object--something small and dark--in Santos's hand. The accompanying
story, by Frank Carlson and Clark Spencer, speculated that the object
might have been a device with which Santos might have shocked Funny
Cide to make him run faster. The article quoted Santos as saying that
he had had with him a "cue ring" for contacting
"outriders." Kentucky horse-racing officials then launched
an investigation, in which they examined that photo and hundreds of
others, along with videotapes of the race. For Santos, the suspicion
that he had cheated became a "nightmare," as he later put
it, in which he was subjected to taunts from the public. Despite an
outpouring of support from his riding colleagues, who vouched for his
integrity, Santos feared that his career had been destroyed. Various
observers noted that in the last seconds of the race, with Funny Cide
galloping at 35 miles per hour, Santos had switched the whip from one
hand to the other, which would have been virtually impossible had he
been holding another object. Furthermore, what had sounded like
"cue ring" and "outrider" in Santos's heavily
accented English proved to be the words "Q-Ray" (the name of
a supposedly ionized bracelet, used for therapeutic purposes) and
"arthritis." On May 12 the investigators exonerated Santos.
"I feel like I had to win the race twice," Santos said
afterward, as Andrew Beyer reported for the Washington Post (May 17,
2003, on-line).
Santos also felt that he had to win at the Preakness,
the second stage of the Triple Crown; as he told Joe Drape for the New
York Times (May 14, 2003), "I have to win it to show the public
that the Derby was won fair and square." Laying to rest any
doubts, on May 17, 2003 Santos led Funny Cide to a commanding
93/4-length victory at the Preakness Stakes (one and 3/16 miles) at
Pimlico Race Course, in Baltimore, Maryland. The margin of victory was
the largest in the history of the race, which dates from 1873, and
Funny Cide became the first New York-bred horse to win the Preakness
since the19th century. "The only machine I had today was the red
horse I was riding," Santos quipped to Paul Moran for Newsday
(May 18, 2003) after the race. "I've been riding 27 years and
this is the best horse I ever rode in my life."
With one of the most elusive and magical feats in
sports--winning horse racing's Triple Crown--within their reach,
Santos and Funny Cide received massive media attention. Since Affirmed
had become a Triple Crown champion, eight horses had won the Derby and
the Preakness, only to lose in the 11/2-mile Belmont Stakes, the
longest, most grueling of the three Triple Crown races, held annually
at Belmont Park. (Among the 11 Triple Crown-winning horses are
Citation, Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and War Admiral.) On June 7,
2003, as a steady rain turned the track into puddle-spotted mud, more
than 101,000 spectators (the second-largest crowd in Belmont history)
watched as, on the final stretch, Empire Maker and Ten Most Wanted
passed Funny Cide, who finished a respectable but disappointing third.
The huge crowd gave a smiling Santos and Funny Cide a standing ovation
after the race. Regarding his experiences during Funny Cide's Triple
Crown bid, the jockey told Harris, "I was in the newspapers every
day. People followed me everywhere. It was wonderful. I hope I made
[people] feel real good, too." Before Funny Cide's owners made a
late decision to enter their horse in the October 25, 2003 Breeders'
Cup Classic, to be run on Santa Anita Racecourse, in Arcadia,
California, Santos had already committed to ride Volponi.
Santos is known for his humility, good nature, and
devotion to hard work. His honors include the 1999 George Woolf
Memorial Award, which recognizes professional and personal
achievements. From his first marriage Santos has a son, Jose Ricardo,
and a daughter, Sophia. He and his second wife, Rita, a native of
Panama and the sister of the jockey Heberto Castillo Jr., married in
1997. The couple have three daughters, Nadia, Selena, and Savannah,
and a son, Jose Jr., and have homes in Florida and New York. Regarding
Jose Jr., who is known to love horse racing and was seen on TV and in
newspaper photos cheering for his father during the latter's Triple
Crown run, Santos told Pat Forde, "I'm hoping one day he'll be a
jockey and keep the Santos tradition going."-- C.F.T.
Suggested Reading:
(Lexington, Kentucky) Courier-Journal (on-line) May 4, 2003, with
photos; New York Times VIII p3 Nov. 29, 1992, D p6 May 14, 2003, D p6
June 4, 2003, with photo; Sport p63+ June 1987, with photos; Sports
Illustrated p46+ May 26, 2003, with photos; thoroughbredtimes.com; USA
Today (on-line) May 12, 2003, with photo
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