Jose Santos Jr, son of ex-riding legend Jose Santos, is in Saratoga, as he has been virtually every year for much of his life, apart from 2020 of course. A likable up-and-coming young jockeys’ agent, his business plan is to form an agency, to have other agents working under him some day, working for jockeys at tracks all over the U.S.
It might work, it might work quickly and well - if he reduces the percentage agents charge … 25 percent makes my blood pressure shoot up just typing it.
“I was born in Queens. My dad nearly missed my birth,” he says. “He was working Colonial Affair up at Saratoga. They won the Whitney two weeks later.
“Dad was leading rider at Saratoga before I was born. We were all there every summer. It was our summer place to go. Last year was the only summer I ever missed.”
Santos Jr grew up alongside future jockeys. “Dylan Davis was my best friend,” he says. “Trevor McCarthy, the Desormeaux kids, the jockeys were all friends back then. We all hung out together.”
Angel Cordero was known as the ‘King of Saratoga’, but Santos Jr remembers when his father broke Cordero’s 11-year streak as leading rider. “He told him if he did, he wanted Angel’s crown and his ponytail. There is a picture of him cutting it off,” he says.
Santos Sr suffered a severe injury in 2007 and doctors advised him to stop. “He had broken his back four times,” says his son. “Ten years later, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. That was an emotional moment. We were all there.”
Death in paradise
Word got out of an incident in morning training, a horrible accident. A young filly fractured her sesamoids, came down and broke her neck. In one instant, the scene changed from poetry in motion on another lovely morning in Saratoga to a corpse on the track, a horrible thing to see, to deal with.
It was a tragedy for the 3-year-old, of course. And for owner Mandy Pope. She didn’t just lose a beautiful young horse. She lost a filly that even money, even an awful lot of money, couldn’t replace. The filly lying dead on the track was an unraced half-sister to world #1 dirt sire Into Mischief, four-time champion Beholder and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf and UAE Derby winner Mendelssohn. She cost a staggering $8.2 million at the 2019 Keeneland September Sale. She was being prepared for her debut for trainer Todd Pletcher.
Unraced horses are bearers of others’ dreams. That is a greater burden on them than the rider on their back. Usually they carry both of those burdens effortlessly, but this time, in just one stride, in an instant, all those dreams were over.
They are probably the weak links, the sesamoids, of the lower leg of a Thoroughbred. Two small, bony attachments to which the branches of the suspensory ligament attach to the ankle. If you dissect a horse’s leg and look at the suspensory apparatus of the animal, it is fascinating. By what miracle could such things evolve into incredible pieces of precision engineering – self-repairing?
It is incredible that these two small bones can withstand the massive forces placed upon them. They have to withstand those forces or there is disaster, but sometimes the weak links cannot hold up to the loads placed on them, sometimes they cannot bear up under the burden. And then they fail.
Mostly they fail in less dramatic fashion. There is swelling, there is lameness. The vet is called, the diagnosis made, normally not a great prognosis for a future racing. But some of them race again, and, as far as breeding goes for an injured filly, all would be good.
Yet sometimes the apparatus fails catastrophically. Sometimes it is terrible, sometimes everything falls apart. One failure leads to another and the entire ruined mess of a joint that one stride before was perfection cannot keep the horse up. There is nothing now but the failure of the whole horse. It comes down in the dirt, the rider beside it, shocked, hurt maybe, both of them lying there.
And then the horse might try to get up.
That is maybe the worst of it, as it scrambles desperately back onto to its legs, one of them useless, swinging dismally now, like a man hung from the gallows. Maybe her broken neck was some mercy.
What may she have achieved? What may her children have achieved? There shall be only so many half-sisters to Into Mischief and now one of them is gone. She was almost literally priceless. She was by American Pharoah and was named America’s Joy - and perhaps she may have been that. We won’t know now.
Saffie’s new idyll
It must be tough to leave a paradise, but Saffie Joseph is pleased he did. He landed in a bed of roses.
Born and brought up in Barbados, a tropical idyll in the Caribbean, the son of a trainer, he followed in his father’s footsteps. His ambitions led him to the States with two horses. He now has 150.
“I came to the States in 2011, when I was 23,” says Joseph. “I won the triple crown in Barbados the year before, but I wanted more so I wanted to come here.
“Last year was my first year at Saratoga and I fell in love with it. I hope to be here every year now and bring my family. [His children are Sienna, 7, and Rocco, 5]. This is a good place for kids to grow up. My first runner this year was a winner. It’s gone a bit cold since, but hey, one is better than zero.”
That has been the theme here, time and again: How this place brings back childhood memories, and how now their children experience the same thing. The people and horses flow through the track, through the town, and the springs keep flowing. Time keeps flowing too, but Saratoga remains constant. Perhaps that is why people like it so much.