Hall of Fame jockey has sweet ride

Kent Desormeaux’s days have brightened since moving east.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Kent Desormeaux is having fun again.

Gone are the dark days that prompted his relocation from Southern California to the East Coast two years ago — days when all he had to show for his efforts were mounting losses.

Now, at 38, the Hall of Fame jockey will ride the probable favorite in Saturday’s 134th Kentucky Derby, when he hopes to steer Big Brown into the winner’s circle.

“I’ve never been so alive,” he said Tuesday on a gray, chilly morning at Churchill Downs. “I have some really good clients right now that are making it fun to wake up in the morning.”

That wasn’t the case two years ago. After ruling Southern California’s racetracks for much of the 1990s, when he led the ultra-competitive jockeys’ standings 11 times, Desormeaux hit a prolonged slump.

Things got so bad that Desormeaux was forced to spend part of his last five years in California riding in Japan.

“I was kind of stalemated,” he said. “I wanted to do better, I knew I should be doing better. I’m better at what I do than what I was being offered, so I wanted to come East and create a new beginning in a fresh place.”

The move worked.

Desormeaux won the riding title at Keeneland’s recently concluded spring meet, including twice riding four winners in a day. His presence on the East Coast led to him riding other horses for Big Brown’s ownership.

The next thing Desormeaux knew, he and his wife, Sonia, joined Big Brown’s owners Michael Iavarone, Richard Schiavo and Paul Pompa Jr. on a private charter flight from New York to Lexington.

“That’s how it all began,” he said. “One of the success stories of moving East is acquiring Big Brown.”

Desormeaux has been aboard for two of the colt’s three career victories, including the Florida Derby, when he won by 5 lengths from the far outside post.

“The owners kind of picked Kent up to ride the horse, so it wasn’t my decision,” trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. said. “Any jockey can do what Kent has done with the horse. It’s the horse that’s making the whole game go.”

Desormeaux’s latest comeback began in 2006 in New York, riding horses trained by Bill Mott, who will saddle Court Vision and Z Humor in the Derby. That year, the Cajun jockey nearly doubled his purse earnings to more than $8.5 million from the previous year in California.

“He’s the little girl with the curl,” Mott said. “When he’s good he’s real good. When he’s in the groove he can be very, very good.”

And when he’s bad?

Mott smiled.

“It seems to me like most riders go through those cycles,” he said. “Momentum, confidence level, the stock they’re riding. When they start getting on good horses, they start doing well. They get in the groove.”