Jockey Davis, Dublin Green mount comeback together

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – When Dublin Green runs in Wednesday’s fourth race at Aqueduct, he’ll be making his first start in a year. His jockey, however, will be coming off an even longer layoff.

Robbie Davis, who hasn’t ridden in a parimutuel horse race in nearly five years, will return to competitive riding Wednesday aboard Dublin Green in the six-furlong turf race for New York-breds. Davis also is the trainer and owner of the 4-year-old son of Dublin.

“I’ve always had a dream to ride one, train one, and own one,” Davis said.

Davis, 56, has even bigger dreams. Forced to leave riding due to chronic knee pain in 2002 after he had won 3,382 races in a 20-year career, Davis seeks a full-time comeback to race riding. He rode one race in 2011 and five in 2013 in two aborted comebacks. He has been training since 2011, winning nine races from 214 starters.

In 2010, Davis underwent knee-replacement surgery. He said Saturday he feels “better than I have in the last 15, 20 years.” Davis said he has his weight down to 124 pounds and gets on his own horses in the mornings.

“I’m working out, I get on my Equicizer, I feel better than I ever have on that Equicizer,” Davis said. “I usually have a little pinch, a little pain, [now] I have no pain. The last 10 years I rode, I rode in constant pain. I was drinking alcohol and that compounded it and made it worse, it was a downhill spiral and I was just miserable, strung out, haggard. Now I don’t have that, I’m not [abusing alcohol] anymore, I’m pain free, I’m fresh. I don’t have to worry about college tuition, high school tuition, it’s just my wife and I. If I don’t get this out of my system now I never will. I’m going to take it to my grave.”

Davis and his wife, Marguerite, have three children who are jockeys – Dylan, Jackie, and Katie – and a fourth, Eddie, who is an exercise rider. While it is Robbie Davis’s dream to ride in a race with all of his children, none is named to ride in Wednesday’s fourth race.

Dylan rides regularly at Aqueduct, Jackie rides at Penn National. Katie recently underwent shoulder surgery and hopes to return in August.

Marguerite Davis said she fully supports her husband’s dream to come back.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “He’s dreaming about it every night.”

Katie Davis said she has been asked frequently why her father wants to ride.

“Why not? He has all the skills,” Katie Davis said. “It doesn’t matter what people say. If you listen to people, you’ll never do it. You take advice from people, but you got to make your own decisions in life.”

As a licensed trainer, Robbie Davis is permitted to ride only his own horses. He said if he were given the opportunity by other trainers to ride, he would give up training or at least move the stable into his wife’s name.

“I’d love to hand this over to my wife and I could go out there and have another go at it,” Davis said. “I look at Gary Stevens, he’s my idol, we’re both from Idaho, we’re both race riders. Look at Gary, he’s having a great year. Mike Smith, too. It could be fruitful.”

Davis isn’t expecting to win Thursday aboard Dublin Green, a big horse who finished last here a year ago. Davis said the horse injured an ankle, then had a breathing issue that has since been rectified.

“He’s a great big, beautiful horse,” Davis said. “I don’t know how fast he is or how good he is, but I know he’s going to need a race or two, or maybe even three, because he’s just a big, big horse and this is just a starting point.”