For jockey Geroux, a winter of highs and lows

NEW ORLEANS – It’s winter in New Orleans, and the French expatriate Florent Geroux should be right at home in America’s most French city. This is Geroux’s fifth Fair Grounds meet. He was the leading rider here the last two. Yet this is a season of change for Geroux.

The best horse Geroux ever rode, Gun Runner, went off to stud after a glorious end to his career, winning the $16 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream on Jan. 27. A month earlier, Geroux experienced a far more piercing loss – his father, Dominique, died unexpectedly in France. The elder Geroux, a retired jockey, had a fall at his home, and Florent was urged to travel to France to see his father.

“They said it was pretty serious, so I flew there, and I saw him the first day, and honestly, he didn’t look great, but it didn’t look like he was dying two days later,” Geroux said Tuesday at Fair Grounds. “He was tired, but it seemed like he just needed to rest.”

Dominique Geroux had suffered a brain injury that led to an epileptic seizure. He died Dec. 27.

“I felt like I lost my No. 1 fan,” said Geroux. “He was my father, too, but we shared the same passion. He was there all the time for me, and he was more than a parent. He was a friend. That’s life, but when I first came back here, I thought I should take off. I didn’t really feel like riding. But then I thought that’s what he liked me to do, what he was enjoying seeing me to do all the time.”

Losing a horse to retirement lands on a far lower existential plane than losing a parent, but Geroux, 31, also faces life after Gun Runner.

“It’s a big hole, but hopefully I can find another horse,” he said. “I’ve found some of my best horses at Fair Grounds – Gun Runner, I’m a Chatterbox.”

He has real prospects on the Saturday card here. Monomoy Girl will be favored in the Grade 2, $200,000 Rachel Alexandra Stakes, and she makes her 3-year-old debut looking like a prime early prospect for the Kentucky Oaks. For trainer Steve Asmussen and Three Chimneys Farm, Gun Runner’s connections, Geroux rides the 3-year-old Principe Guilherme in the Grade 2 Risen Star. Principe Guilherme finished second in the Lecomte Stakes. Geroux also rides Mr. Misunderstood, who brings a five-race winning streak into the Fair Grounds Handicap as the probable favorite.

Yet it’s fair to wonder whether Geroux will get back to the heights his career somewhat unexpectedly reached in 2016 and 2017.

Geroux apprenticed in France and had his first U.S. mount in 2007. He settled onto the Chicago circuit the next year and made steady if less-than-spectacular progress. Doug Bredar became his agent in 2010, and in 2011, Geroux’s annual win total jumped by 78 to 146. In 2014, Geroux had his best year in terms of earnings to that point, banking $5.8 million in purses, and if that turned out to have been the summit, no one would have been greatly surprised.

Instead, Geroux broke out of his regional shackles. After winning 13 graded stakes over his first seven years riding, he won 14 in 2015 alone. Then came 2016, a remarkable campaign considering where Geroux had been just two years earlier. Geroux rode in 144 grades stakes and won 30 of them. His mounts earned $17.68 million in purses. Major outfits away from Geroux’s base in the Midwest tapped him to ride their stakes shippers.

“I was going to every racetrack on Saturdays and Sundays, and it doesn’t matter which track, I was winning,” Geroux said.

Gun Runner’s ascendance in 2017 was a boon to Geroux, but without Gun Runner’s five graded stakes wins and nearly $7 million in earnings, Geroux’s annual totals last year would have fallen to about $7 million in purses and 10 graded stakes wins. Geroux’s season was strong without Gun Runner and utterly memorable with him. It also was a decline from 2016.

“Just less opportunity, really,” Geroux said. “I was trying. Many horses got beat in the beginning, some of them got hurt, and the factor of luck has a lot to do with it. It’s not like some of those guys don’t want to use me, but they can’t take a top jockey off even if they are willing to give me a chance. Honestly, being in the Midwest, it makes it very hard to top what I did two years ago.”

It also will be hard to top the feeling Geroux got less than a month ago, when Gun Runner cruised home in the world’s richest race. Geroux had not only been riding the horse for two solid years but had been closely involved in Gun Runner’s rise.

“With Gun Runner, it makes it more special than just getting a leg up and riding the horse,” Geroux said. “I was part of the team, and that felt great. I learned for myself to be around a horse like that, and now I’ve been there. Not too many guys have the opportunity to be 4-5 in a $16 million race, and they can see I can take the pressure.”

Now a winter of elation and sadness is winding down in New Orleans. It is on to the next season for Geroux – whatever that might bring.