Luzzi having screw removed from leg

ELMONT, N.Y. – Jockey Mike Luzzi, sidelined since November when he was badly injured in a paddock accident at Aqueduct, will undergo surgery Friday to remove a screw from his left leg that is causing him irritation.

Luzzi, 45, said he does not view the surgery as a setback in his attempt to return to riding. Doctors have not given him a target date for a return.

“I want to be 100 percent when I do come back,” Luzzi said.

Luzzi said he is having one of the two screws that were placed into the leg removed because it is rubbing against his thigh and causing him discomfort.

“I feel like I got a golf ball in my pocket,” Luzzi said.

Luzzi broke his left leg and badly fractured his pelvis in the paddock at Aqueduct on Nov. 2 when his scheduled mount, Tricky Zippy, flipped over and fell on him.

Luzzi said his pelvis “is totally healed” and that he has been doing physical therapy two hours a day, three times a week.

“It’s become like a hobby for me,” Luzzi said. “On the other days, I do upper-body stuff.”

Luzzi, the 1989 Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey and a winner of 3,420 races, was recently honored by his peers with the George Woolf Memorial Award, presented to a rider who demonstrates high standards of personal and professional conduct on and off the racetrack. He accepted the award in March at Santa Anita.

Luzzi is out at Belmont Park most mornings watching his son Lane, an aspiring jockey, get on horses.