BALTIMORE (AP) — Raul Mena was a young jockey in a race in his native Chile in 2011 when the horse he was riding jumped the rail, throwing him to the ground with severe injuries.
“It was a scary accident,” Mena recalled Wednesday. “I broke 24 bones in all my body, and I was in a coma for five weeks.”
Now 33, Mena has a mount in a Triple Crown race for the first time. He will be aboard local long shot Pay Billy in the 150th Preakness Stakes this Saturday, the apex of his up-and-down career that also included a broken femur, which not long ago led him to consider retirement.
“I said to (my wife) Jaqui maybe if I don’t make it in five years — I’m just going to take five more years — if I don’t make it, I’m not going to ride horses anymore because it’s very painful and it’s stressful,” Mena told The Associated Press. “But I think if you keep pushing forward, you never know when you can be part of a race of the Triple Crown.”
That would not have been imaginable in the immediate aftermath of his spill at Valparaiso Sporting Club Viña del Mar. When he woke up from the coma, Mena realized he had broken six vertebrae, six ribs, both shoulders, his collarbone and more.
One doctor told him he would never ride again.
“A couple months later, the doctors say maybe you’re going to be OK walking, but try to find a new job,” Mena said. He was given 18 months to heal. Eight months later, not yet 20 years old and determined to keep going, Mena returned to the track.
“I wasn’t 100% to ride the horse, that’s for sure,” Mena said. “When I came back, I wasn’t feeling really good, but I was young and I was doing it.”
Mena moved to the U.S. in November 2014 and started his path to success. He set a career high for wins in a season in 2019, then won $1.78 million in purse money in 2021 and eclipsed that figure with $1.83 million last year.
Pay Billy qualified for the Preakness by winning the Federico Tesio Stakes at Laurel Park in Maryland last month, with Mena aboard for trainer Michael Gorham.
“He’s a hard worker and he’s got determination, takes care of himself and keeps himself in excellent shape,” Gorham said. “If he wants to do it, he does it.”
Journalism hits the mud
Preakness favorite and Kentucky Derby runner-up Journalism took to the track at Pimlico Race Course for the first time Wednesday morning, getting in a light, mile-long gallop on a muddy track following over an inch of rain overnight.
“I think he was fine,” trainer Michael McCarthy said. “He’s an easy read. … He was just kind of having a look around. We certainly weren’t looking for anything spectacular.”
Journalism was installed as the 8-5 morning line favorite after finishing second to Sovereignty in the Derby. Sovereignty’s owners and trainer opted to skip the Preakness, citing the short two-week turnaround.
Three Derby horses are running: Journalism, seventh-place Sandman and 16th-place American Promise. McCarthy wanted to see the right signs in his horse before deciding to go to the Preakness.
“I just didn’t want to commit without having laid my eyes on him first for a couple of days,” McCarthy said. “My guys have been telling me all week how good he was doing. There’s a lot of moving parts. There’s multiple (owners) and things like that, so everybody needs to be kept abreast and on the same page.”
Blinkers cut back?
After taking all six of his horses he brought to Pimlico to the track in the rain and the mud, 89-year-old Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas was pleased with how Preakness entrant American Promise and Princess Aliyah — who’s running in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes for 3-year-old fillies Friday — handled the slop.
“Exceptionally good,” Lukas said from his usual seat in the corner of the stakes barn. “There was a lot more moisture in the track than I thought there would be. I didn’t know it rained that much.”
It might’ve also given him an idea for the Preakness if the conditions are similar. American Promise races with blinkers on his face to keep his eyes focused ahead of him, but those might get adjusted to reduce the amount of mud obscuring the horse’s vision.
“I may cut them back a little bit,” Lukas said. “It just packs in there, so what I do is, if it’s raining like this, I just nip them back.”
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AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing
