Jockey Richard Migliore is Still Fighting

By Michele Hoos and Chris Kieffer

Richard Migliore, a 44-year-old jockey with the New York Racing Association has broken his neck, arm, wrist, pelvis, ribs and leg, yet he has shown the grit and determination to get back on the horse thousands of times for 28 years.


Now the man who once returned to horse racing six months after a 1988 neck injury that doctors feared would leave him paralyzed, is again fighting to extend his career after a series of injuries between 2003 and 2005 began to cost him opportunities.


"Why should I ride you with all your battle scars, when I can ride 20-year-olds that haven't been hurt?" Migliore remembers a trainer asking him before he decided to leave for California to reinvigorate his career in November 2006. "I had a lot of good riding left in me: I wasn't ready to just walk away from it," Migliore explained. "So I needed to reinvent myself."

Before going West, Migliore had never won a Breeders' Cup or a Triple Crown race, which he saw as a glaring omission to his resume.

"Business was bad, and he was too prideful of a guy to sit down and let it happen," New York trainer Jimmy Jerkens said after Migliore rode Jerkins' horse to a third-place finish.

In Santa Ana, Migliore did prove himself with a Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint win aboard Desert Code and a prestigious George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award (honoring performance on and off the racetrack).

But Migliore quickly discovered he was too far away from his family. His weekly routine of taking an overnight flight to New York on Sunday night and then back to California on Tuesday evenings was getting to be too much for him.

Last fall, he returned home to New York to keep pushing toward his dream of 5,000 career wins, of which is less than 600 away-to rebuild his career opportunities in his home state. With the same grit he has used to overcome devastating injuries, Migliore is trying to regain the confidence of the trainers who once doubted him.

"Being a jockey is a lot like being an actor. You also have to audition for roles, with your part being a certain horse," Migliore said. "When you go out and see a trainer, you try to ingratiate yourself and get that role."

On a recent Sunday, Migliore had "roles" in four of the nine races. Winning twice and taking third in one race, Migliore made a big statement to the trainers and fans at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens.

"Jockey colonies can get fickle," said Tom Bellhouse. Bellhouse runs the East Coast Division of West Point Thoroughbreds, a conglomerate that owns Mr. Fantasy, the horse Migliore rode to victory in that Sunday's seventh race. "When you have a drought or have an injury, it can be hard to bounce back and get the mount you deserve. Going to California really energized him, and he's riding with a lot of confidence now."

The day's two wins manifested themselves differently. Majhood, a copper-colored bay, was a three-year-old better suited for longer distances. Migliore sat back with Majhood in the day's sixth race before making his move down the stretch with a rhythmic hand ride that spurred the horse to another gear and to victory. "He can hand ride as good as anybody," Edward Brown, the assistant clerk of scales at Aqueduct said of Migliore. "He looks perfection on a horse. It is like watching somebody dance in a Broadway show."

Meanwhile, Mr. Fantasy, a dark-brown three-year-old bay, was making just his second career start. But he burst out of the gates into an early lead and held the lead throughout, even pacing himself during the middle of the race before taking the victory.

Each day, Migliore says, he will continue to defy the skeptics and chase his dream of 5,000 wins. "What's most difficult is battling the perception of being an older jockey," Migliore said. "The perception is what you're fighting."