Valdez continues to defy the odds

AUBURN, Wash. – It’s been almost four years since Felipe Valdez won a stakes race. The interminable space in between has been occupied by a life-altering racing accident, surgery and then more surgery, years of rehabilitation, and finally tentative first steps toward reclaiming his career.

Against this unfortunate backdrop, a lot of people will be rooting for Valdez on Sunday when he rides Charlie Thomas in the Seattle Slew Handicap at Emerald Downs.

Charlie Thomas has a better chance than Valdez was given after he came off a horse named Score for Fun shortly after the start of a race at Hollywood Park on Dec. 3, 2010. His injuries, including two broken vertebrae in his lower back, were severe. Two doctors examined Valdez, then 32 years old, and reached the same conclusion: He would need invasive spinal surgery to walk again, and his riding career was over.

That’s not how it played out, of course. Months after his spill, Valdez elected to undergo the surgery, a tricky procedure that required pins to be placed near his spine to stabilize his back. He was confined to a wheelchair for months and then used a walker before standing on his own two feet. He told friends he would pursue a second career as a trainer while privately holding out hope that he might ride again.

Valdez began this week 97 mounts into his comeback. He took his first baby steps toward a full-time return when he rode a single horse at Santa Anita on March 21. He then packed his things and came north, accepting his next mount a month later on opening day at Emerald Downs. He rode his first winner the next day, riding Strawberry Dawn for Dan Markle.

But there have been some lean times for Valdez, who at one point at this meet was 1 for 35 and buried in the standings. Going into Friday’s card, Valdez had lifted his record to 9 for 96.

“I’ve gone through a lot,” he said. “I was leading rider in Portland like 14 years ago, and then I went to Texas, Southern California. I have experience, and you know your luck is going to change. People are going to give you an opportunity. When I was 0 for 35 or whatever, I wasn’t worried. I know I can win races.”

Valdez’s plan is to return to California as soon as possible after using his time at Emerald to get fit and reintroduced to the perils of going 40 mph on horseback. Toward that end, Valdez spent most of this week at Santa Anita, exercising horses in the morning, before returning Friday to Seattle. It’s not just the tug of a bigger circuit that is pulling him southward, he said. His loved ones – girlfriend Acucena and daughters Stacey, 11; Milay, 4; and Emily, 2 – are there, waiting for Valdez to come home. His best friend, jockey Fernando Perez, has enjoyed some success in Southern California, and Valdez wants to join him.

“Acucena has been supporting me since the accident,” Valdez said. “We went through hell the past four years – two surgeries on my back, physical therapy.

“Fernando is like my brother; he’s like my only friend. He has been supporting me all along, since he came back from Canada and even before that. He’s helping get me mounts out of town, in New Mexico and places like that. I’m going to ride some stakes races there in the first week in August. I need to start winning some stakes races; it will make it a little easier. But I know it’s going to be hard to come back after the injury.”

While Valdez has a handful of mounts lined up at Emerald over the next few weeks, Charlie Thomas could be his going-away gift. After racing on grass and synthetic surfaces in Northern California, Charlie Thomas took kindly to the dirt surface at Emerald, rallying through the late stages to finish third behind Del Rio Harbor and Noosito in the one-mile Coca-Cola Handicap on June 22. He faces them again Sunday in the Seattle Slew.

“I think I have a pretty good chance with this horse,” Valdez said. “There were a lot of horses in the last race, and I had a lot of traffic all the way around. I only had a chance to ride him from the sixteenth pole to the wire. I think with only four horses in the race ... I know Del Rio and Noosito will go, and we’ll rate and make one run. I think with a clean trip, my horse has a chance to be close. He never had a chance to really run last time.”

If his tenure at Emerald is going to be brief, it also has been hugely beneficial. Valdez answered questions about his conditioning, timing, and, perhaps most important, his courage during his three months here.

“The hardest part was just to convince people that I’m still good, that I still ride the same way I did before,” Valdez said. “I’m glad to be back. It takes a little time to get the confidence and the timing. That takes a couple of months when you’re riding races. The only way you can get back is to ride races. That’s one of the reasons I went up to Emerald. If I stayed here in California, I’d be riding one a day.

“I feel 100 percent. I use to get tired, but the last three or four weeks, I’m not tired at all. My weight is good. I’m good to go again.”