For Graham, Fair Grounds title tinged with sadness

James Graham should be on top of the world.

With 90 wins at this meet, he is 25 up on the second-place rider in the Fair Grounds colony, and Graham is a 1-9 favorite to win his first Fair Grounds riding title after finishing second or third in the standings the last six seasons.

That will mark two straight riding crowns for Graham, who also was the leading jockey for the second time during the Arlington meet in 2014. But with Arlington cutting back its racing schedule this summer, and with Graham finding so much success, he is making the move to a new circuit this spring, and after his usual stop at the Keeneland meet in April, he plans to stay in Kentucky for the Churchill Downs racing season.

But there’s a veneer of sadness coating all the good going for Graham.

His longtime agent, Britt McGehee, started losing weight precipitously this winter. McGehee was found to have a rare form of cancer. A former trainer and basically a lifetime racetracker, McGehee has gotten treatment, but his outlook remains tenuous. For a while, he helped run Graham’s business by telephone, but this past weekend, Frank Bernis formally became Graham’s agent.

Graham is pleased that Bernis, who also represents Brian Hernandez Jr., is booking his mounts now. But his relationship with McGehee runs deep. He is not abandoning it.

“Britt is still my agent, and he’ll always be my agent,” Graham said. “Frank is my agent until Britt is feeling better.”

Graham, 35, had emigrated from Ireland and was galloping for trainer Jeff Thornbury when he first took out a jockey’s license in 2003. Steve Elzey was his agent for six months, but then McGehee took his book. Twelve years might as well be eternity in jockey-agent relationships.

“Jockeys and agents, it’s one year, three years, and they go separate ways,” said Graham. “In all honesty, I think we had one disagreement – ever – over a certain horse or a trainer, and that was that. He’s always been there for me, as a friend and as a mentor, and I hope to be there for him. It was a shock when I found out the news. You don’t turn your head and say, ‘Ah, well, on to the next one.’ I’m not like that. I never will be like that.”

McGehee helped guide Graham through the fairly remarkable period of development that’s gotten him to this advanced stage of his career. Graham was rough around the edges as a rider when he first started out, his style heavily European and not particularly suited to American dirt racing. Year by year, Graham got better and better. His 238 wins in 2014 were a career best, though his purse earnings were slightly down last season from his 2012 peak.

The reason for that? Chicago. Arlington has long been one of Graham’s mainstays, but the racing economy in Illinois, where tracks subsist on betting handle alone now, is in ill health. Arlington plans to race just three days a week for much of its meet. Some riders will go to Indiana Grand on the Chicago dark days, but Graham, who has three kids ages 2 to 7, doesn’t want that lifestyle.

“Arlington was great,” he said. “I was there 11 years. The racing was good, people were good. But going down to three days a week wasn’t good. It’s sad because it’s such a beautiful place.”

Graham will try a new place this spring. He probably will do well. But there will still be some sadness in Kentucky, too.

◗ No surprise: Graham has an apparently live mount in the featured sixth race on Thursday’s card. His mount, Top of the Page, is one of seven 3-year-olds entered in a first-level turf-route allowance also open to $50,000 claimers.

The New Orleans forecast this week is all wet, and Thursday’s grass races could well be moved to the main track. That might not be so bad for Top of the Page, who was a third-start maiden winner on turf last out but also generally seems to be improving and may be set for a solid showing regardless of surface.