Mario Gutierrez: From Poverty to Kentucky Derby Win Yvonne Zacharias - Vancouver Sun
go to original May 6, 2012

I'll Have Another (R), with jockey Mario Gutierrez in the irons, wins the 138th Kentucky Derby at Churchhill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, May 5, 2012. (Jeff Haynes/Reuters)

VANCOUVER — He grew up in a poor family in a small place in Veracruz, Mexico. His father, a jockey, gave him a love of horses.

At 19, Mario Gutierrez was lured from the big racetrack in Mexico City to a racetrack in Vancouver called Hastings that he had never heard of by a group of horsemen here who knew talent when they saw it and decided to run with it.

Gutierrez never disappointed them. Since his arrival in 2006, he has been one of the Hastings track’s star jockeys.

Now, in one of those improbable twists of fate, Gutierrez will ride in the fabled Kentucky Derby this Saturday. He will run for the roses. And many eyes in Vancouver will be on him, cheering from afar.

In the stands in Louisville, Ky., a crowd of around 160,000 will gather. Grown men are known to cry as they sing My Old Kentucky Home. On Millionaire’s Row, they will sip mint juleps as one of the world’s biggest horse races unfolds. And Gutierrez will be part of it.

At precisely 3:24 p.m., for two heart-stopping, gut-wrenching, thunderous minutes, he will ride the race of a lifetime. He will be living every jockey’s dream.

“Nobody knows what is going to happen that day,” Gutierrez said from Southern California, where he was training for the event. “What is going to happen will happen.”

Once out of the gate, Gutierrez will forget the crowd. For a few brief fleeting moments, he will forget the hardship that got him to the starting gate. Instead, he will focus on his horse, I’ll Have Another. As the world churns up at him, he will try to spot openings, try to spot trouble among the three-year-old thoroughbreds and jockeys around him.

“I really have to be focused and keep my head clear and just give the horse a chance and help him to do the best,” he said simply. “I can’t just go there and melt down because then I won’t be happy with myself.”

Although Spanish is his first language and he is a bit shy, he had no trouble finding the words to express his gratitude to those who helped get him where he is today.

There is his family in Mexico who have believed in him, including his father, Mario Sr., who taught him how to ride quarter-horses when he was a teenager. Then there are the horsemen at Hastings Park who he calls his second family.

Count jockey agent Wayne Snow among them. Roughly six years ago, the veteran horseman happened to have a friend with a condo in Mexico who used to go to the races in Mexico City.

He told Snow about a little rider down there who was going to be a good rider. Perhaps a great rider one day. He had been at the track in Mexico City for only eight months. His name was Mario Gutierrez.

Snow struggled with immigration authorities to get the rider through the many hurdles on the path north to Canada and a new life.

Once he got here, Gutierrez found the first two weeks desperately hard. The Hastings track seemed small compared with the one in Mexico City. He couldn’t speak the language. He wanted to go home.

Then Snow hooked him up at Hastings with the legendary trainer, Troy Taylor, a man of gentle ways in his early 80s, and Glen Todd, who owns a large stable of horses. They took the 19-year-old Mexican jockey under their wing.

Gutierrez recognizes he could have easily flown off the rails both on the track and off here. He was so young when he got here. He credits Taylor and Todd for keeping him on track. “They were always there, pointing me in the right direction.”

As Gutierrez’s star rose, offers from other bigger tracks came to him, but he chose to stay here.

Last fall, Taylor and Todd travelled with Gutierrez to Southern California. Again, they used their connections to vault their promising rider to new heights.

At a barbecue, they connected him with veteran jockey agent Ivan Puhich, an 85-year-old ex-marine who knows his way around a racetrack or two in the States.

Then while riding at Hollywood Park near Los Angeles, Gutierrez met I’ll Have Another, a thoroughbred owned by J. Paul and Zillah Reddam and trained by Doug O’Neill.

“As jockeys, we are on horses every day. Every once in a while, there comes one that you know is special.” For him, meeting I’ll Have Another was one of those times.

“He is so focused. He loves to race. He’ll give you a hundred per cent every time you ask him.”

Gutierrez pulled off a stunning upset victory on the back of the horse at the Santa Anita Derby near Los Angeles on April 7. That was his ticket to ride in the Kentucky Derby.

Suddenly this obscure rider from a little-known racetrack in Vancouver was in the big leagues.

This is the 138th Kentucky Derby. Some of the best riders in the world have tried to win it a dozen times or more, only to fail. Only 41 jockeys have won it on their first try.

As the seconds tick by, Snow will be watching at Hastings, thinking about the kid he brought north from Mexico City, thinking only one thing: “I hope to hell he wins.”

In that, he will not be alone.

yzacharias@vancouversun.com

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