Hovdey: Steiner has witnessed agony and ecstasy

Shortly before going to work last Sunday at Emerald Downs, Joe Steiner was on the phone with his brother Jack, who trains horses at Golden Gate Fields.

“How’s Dennis Carr?” Joe asked. “I heard he had a head-on collision during workouts.”

“Yeah, I heard it was bad,” Jack replied. “But he’s OK.”

Cheered by the good news about a colleague, Joe Steiner went forth and rode his 1,000th winner Sunday in his very first mount of the Emerald Downs season, an emotional milestone accomplished in front of family and friends in his native Northwest. Who says you can’t go home again?

Steiner was not aware until later in the day that at the precise moment he was riding the 8-year-old mare Gold Bloom to victory in the $4,000 claiming event, Carr was being examined in the Golden Gate infirmary for a head injury sustained when his mount in the day’s fifth race tossed him out of the back of the starting gate.

Carr, a 46-year-old journeyman known both East and West, later underwent surgery to relieve the dangerous pressure from a subcranial hemhorrhage that required the removal of part of his skull. The reported prognosis was for a complete recovery, although Carr’s career is likely at an end, which means – at least to a jockey – that recovery will be not so complete after all.

So goes the never-ending seesaw of the bitter and the sweet in the lives of Thoroughbred jockeys. It took the often-injured Steiner 34 seasons to reach the significant 1,000-winner plateau, and now he is determined to pad the number this spring and summer at his hometown track. Carr, on the other hand, probably will not get to add to his win total of 2,905, much of that success accomplished in the giant shadow of the Bay Area’s Russell Baze.

“I like Dennis a lot,” said Steiner, who by his count has ridden at 52 different racetracks. “He’s a real sensitive guy who’s won a ton of races. You always like riding with a jock like him because he does the right thing out there.”

By Monday morning, the Carr and Steiner headlines served as fitting background to the announcement that Chris Antley was among four new individuals entering the Thoroughbred racing Hall of Fame.

Inspiring and aggravating by turns, Antley was a walking billboard for the bittersweet. For him, racing was easy, while life was hard, so hard that his death at age 34 in December 2000 from injuries sustained during the frenzy of a drug overdose surprised very few in his immediate circle of family and friends.

In just 15 years of riding, with more than a few interruptions for rehab stints and self-imposed exile, Antley won 3,480 races, including two Kentucky Derbies, and a national championship. His virtuosity in the saddle was admired far and wide, especially by his peers, who worked very hard to do the same things that seemed to come naturally to Antley.

“When they were taking entries for the 1999 Derby, he told me what number he would be and said he would win the Derby with Charismatic,” Steiner recalled. “He got that number and won the race. I remember thinking, ‘What is this guy made of?’ ”

The consensus is that Antley was spun from a unique blend of physical brilliance and emotional torment. Clearly, he was not made for the long haul, certainly not for a career like Steiner’s, which has been characterized by a refusal to take no for an answer in the face of numerous injuries.

“It feels like half the time I’ve been riding I spent on the shelf,” Steiner said. “But when they told me to take four months for a broken bone, I made sure I took all the time I needed to recover, while other riders might rush back. That’s probably why I feel so great right now.”

Steiner is wearing a plate, six screws, and two spacers in his neck, a rod in his lower right leg, and a plate supporting the orbital bone around one eye.

“For 32 broken bones and all the plates and screws, I don’t have any aches or pains at all,” Steiner said. “And surprisingly, nothing goes off when I go through the metal detector at the airport.”

Steiner was getting precious few chances in Southern California this season, which prompted his move to Washington state with his bride, the artist Dagmar Galleithner.

“To win any race is the greatest feeling,” Steiner said. “It’s the ultimate high. I wish I could share that feeling with people so they’d know what it’s like, because nothing comes close.”

For some, though, it’s not enough. Steiner visited Antley in rehab toward the end and saw a man in the throes of physical agony and psychological pain.

“It was hard, almost like he was too intelligent for his own good,” Steiner said. “Like his brain was on fire.”

Steiner prefers to remember the Antley who stood watching a replay of a race Steiner won at Del Mar, clearly perplexed. At the time, Steiner was not getting many chances.

“There’s something wrong here,” Antley said. “You should be riding a lot more races; you’re that good. I can’t figure it out.”

“What do you think it is?” Steiner said. “Is there something I can do to make a difference?”

“I don’t know,” Antley said, shaking his head and walking back to the room. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“I took it as a huge compliment,” Steiner said. “But he never did give me the answer.”