Fair Grounds: Camejo finding his groove in transition from jockey to trainer

NEW ORLEANS – Jose Camejo’s career path in racing changed suddenly, with a spill in a race almost three years ago at Evangeline Downs.

In the sixth race on May 28, 2011, Camejo was riding Kellys Next Storm, who was running in second place when he slipped and fell at the quarter pole.

“People told me he got up and starting running again,” said Camejo, whose neck was broken.

He broke four vertebrae. He said he spent six days in a hospital but luckily didn’t need surgery.

“It took me like 10 months to go back to riding,” Camejo said. He rode in a few races in 2012, but his neck still hurt, he said.

“That was it,” he said. “That’s why I decided to get a trainer’s license.”

On Feb. 22, Camejo, 36, secured his first graded stakes victory – as a trainer or jockey – when Potomac River made a strong stretch run to win the Grade 3 Fair Grounds Handicap on the turf. The victory also was Camejo’s first at Fair Grounds as a trainer.

“It opened a lot of doors when I won that race,” Camejo said. He said he received inquiries about horses to train next season at Fair Grounds.

Camejo’s father, who has the same name, is an assistant trainer in their native Venezuela, the younger Camejo said.

“He never wanted me to be a jockey,” he said. “He always wanted me to be a trainer.”

The younger Camejo said he rode in Venezuela from 1996 until 2000, then rode in Mexico for a few years before coming to the United States to gallop at Calder in 2004. Camejo rode at several U.S. tracks, including Turfway Park, River Downs, Indiana Downs, Ellis Park, Louisiana Downs, Evangeline Downs, Delta Downs, and Fair Grounds. From 1,895 career mounts in the United States, he won 130 races from 2003 to 2012. He won three races at Fair Grounds from 114 mounts in 2010 and 2011.

A licensed trainer since 2013, he has won seven races from 39 career starts. He won two races last year at Evangeline Downs and four races at Suffolk Downs.

Camejo, who is overseeing a six-horse stable at Fair Grounds, said he’s training Potomac River only for this meet. When it’s over, the horse will go back to trainer Sergio Baez, for whom Potomac River won the Grade 3 River City Handicap in November at Churchill Downs.

The arrangement is working out well for Potomac River, Camejo, and jockey Juan P. Vargas, who came to Fair Grounds to stay close to the horse. After finishing eighth in the Grade 3 Col. E.R. Bradley Handicap on Jan. 18, Potomac River, a 5-year-old English Channel horse, rebounded in the $147,000 Fair Grounds Handicap.

“When he ran the first time, he just wasn’t ready,” Camejo said.

Camejo said he likes how Potomac River has trained since the Fair Grounds Handicap. He’s headed toward the track’s most significant turf race, the $400,000, Grade 2 Mervin Muniz on March 29.

“He’s doing great,” Camejo said. “He feels great, much better. He’s getting better and better. He’s going to be tough in that race.”

“He likes the distance,” Vargas said. The Muniz distance is the same as the Fair Grounds Handicap, about 1 1/8 miles.