Edgar Prado - My Guy Barbaro: A Jockeys Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with Americas Favorite Horse

O ne spring afternoon in 2007, I was sitting in the jockeys room at Belmont Park when my cell phone buzzed, signaling the arrival of a text message. I pulled out my phone to see who was contacting me.

The messagewritten anonymously, in Spanishsent a chill up my spine.

You dont know me and I dont know you, it read, but God put you on this earth for one purpose. Whatever you do in life, make sure you fulfill that purpose.

I was stunned.

Ramon Dominguez, my friend and fellow jockey, was sitting at the next locker. We had a race in a couple of minutes. I leaned over and showed him the message. He laughed.

Whoever wrote that probably sent it to the wrong person, he said.

I didnt think so.

It had been almost a year since an amazing three-year-old colt named Barbaro had taken me to the highest and lowest moments of my career within a span of weeks, making me a main character in one of the most dramatic sports stories everone that made worldwide news, affected millions of people, and changed the horse racing industry forever. I probably touched more people as Barbaros jockey than I had with all of my other mounts combined, and coming from a jockey who has ridden in more than 25,000 races since 1983, thats saying something.

Since my time on Barbaro, I had received thousands of letters, cards, phone calls, e-mails, and text messages from around the world. I had thought they would surely slow down and stop at some point, but it had been a year, and they were still coming. I couldnt get through a day without more people either writing, calling, or e-mailing me about Barbaro, asking me to pose for a picture because I had ridden him, or just thanking me for having been involved with him.

It was enough to make me wonder: Was my purpose in life, in fact, to have ridden that horse?

Ordinarily, I would never think that way. Racing fans get philosophical and sentimental about various horses and different aspects of the sport, but when youre on the inside, its a grueling, cutthroat business and theres no room for sentiment or philosophy. I ride eleven and a half months a year, five or six days a week, five to seven races a day, mostly in New York and Florida, with occasional trips cross-country and around the world for important national and international races. I love the job, but it isnt an afternoons entertainment for me, as it is for the fans; it is how I put food on the table. Every time I get on a horse, the other jockeys are trying to beat my brains in, and Im doing my best to get past them. I learned early that youll be sorry if you dwell for long on anything other than your next race and your next horse.

I had always thought that my purpose in life, aside from being a good husband and father, was to honor the athletic gifts God gave me and be the best jockey I could. Even though my experience with Barbaro shook me to my soul, I had continued to ride and win. But here it was, a whole year after Barbaro won the Kentucky Derby, and I was still seeing tears in peoples eyes when they approached. I was still receiving emotional cards and letters, and text messages that seemed to have come from a higher place.

Because of my journey with Barbaro, I had touched people in some meaningful way. To them, I would always be the jockey of the doomed superstar the world fell in love with. It didnt matter that I had won more than 5,500 races, including the Belmont Stakes twice, on horses other than Barbaro. It wouldnt matter if I went out and won racings Triple Crown on another horse.

Maybe that text message was right. Maybe, indeed, I had been put on this earth to take Barbaros journey with him, share in his highs and lows, and represent to people whatever they wanted to see in me as a result. If so, I just hoped I had fulfilled my purpose.

Being religious myself, I had spoken to God about it. Barbaros rise and fall left so many questions unanswered. Why tease us with such a wonderful athlete, only to yank him away at the peak of his glory? Why have him come so close to beating the odds stacked against him and then fall short?

A year after his greatest triumph, I think I knew some of the answers. With millions of charitable dollars being raised in Barbaros name, and with the public more aware now than ever of how important it is to treat racehorses with respect, I think the purpose of Barbaros amazing talent was to attract attention and raise public awareness. He did that beautifully. And he meant so much to so many people.

In the end, it was just destiny, thats all, Gods plan for that horsea journey of such incredible talent, passion, strength, and endurance that no one would believe it if they hadnt seen it themselves.

I lived it, and Im so happy and grateful I did. But Ill never be the same. I realize that now. I have gone on with my life and back to my place in an intensely competitive sport, but Ill never feel entirely whole again.

A little piece of me is gone.

T he first time I laid eyes on Barbaro, I finished what seemed like half a mile behind him in the Laurel Futurity, a race for two-year-old thoroughbreds at Laurel Park in Maryland. The date was November 19, 2005, the weather sunny and warm. I was riding another horse, a colt named Creve Coeur. Barbaro had raced just once before and was still so unknown that the track announcer called him bar-BEAR-o. But boy, he was already a rocket. He finished so far ahead of Creve Coeur and the rest of the field that I didnt see much of him other than his rear getting smaller and smaller as he disappeared into the distance.

Almost 11,000 fans were watching in the stands, mostly drawn to the track by the days featured race, a highly rated short sprint event that had brought speedy horses and top jockeys to Maryland from around the country. The Futurity was part of the undercard, the slate of races leading up to the sprint. It was a turf race, run on Laurels luscious grass course, and it had an impressive history, having been won by superstars such as Secretariat and Affirmed when they were youngsters on the rise back in the 1970s. But no horse of that caliber had won the event in years, so no one expected to see a phenomenal performance. Many of the other twelve horses in the field with Barbaro hadnt raced much and still werent sure what they were doing.

I had heard a little, very little, about Barbaro before the race. Im always talking to other people in racingjockeys and their agents, horse owners and trainers, grooms and exercise ridersto stay on top of which horses are running well, where theyre running, and whether I might be able to ride them. I vaguely recalled someone somewhere saying that a two-year-old colt trained by Michael Matz had run extremely well in his first race at Delaware Park, a racetrack in Wilmington, Delaware, in early October. But if the horses name was mentioned, I didnt remember it, and the news pretty much went in one ear and out the other.

It came back to me when I looked around the paddock at Laurel as the horses in the Futurity were being saddled before the race. Barbaro looked like a man among boys. A brown bay with a splash of white between his eyes, he was a towering 17 hands tallalmost six feetand bulged with muscles through his chest and front shoulders. Most of the other horses in the race were up to a foot shorter and noticeably thinner; they were typical equine teenagers, all legs and painfully gawky. Barbaro was the same age but, with sturdy legs, a broad rear, and a bodybuilders physique, naturally built to run hard. He wasnt a sleek and slender classic beauty. He was all jock, a toned heavyweight boxer just realizing how hard he could punch.