Humble Cooksey Embodies All That's Good About Thoroughbred Racing
By: William F. Reed

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Apr. 13, 2003) - On the day after she broke both her legs in a horrific spill at Keeneland, jockey Patti Cooksey lay in her bed at the University of Kentucky Hospital and said, "God has really blessed me."

Her husband, John Neal, and daughter, Chelsea Ann, were sitting together in a chair near her bed. Her mom was fussing around, as moms tend to do. And Patti, one of the bravest and kindest people ever to set foot on a race track, looked surprisingly radiant.

She wore no makeup, but she didn't need to. Her beauty is in her smile, her heart, and her indomitable spirit. She jammed a Blue Grass Stakes baseball cap onto her head and said, "Yeah, this is what I need."

Less than 24 hours earlier, she was engaged in the work that always has enchanted her, disappointed her, tested her, and defined her. She was riding a Thoroughbred at Keeneland in the first race of the Blue Grass Stakes Day card.

It was lovely at Keeneland on Saturday, Aor. 12 and when it's lovely at Keeneland there is no more beautiful place on God's green earth. If there is a heaven, and the deeply religious Cooksey would argue there is, it will look very much like Keeneland on a warm and sunny day in the spring, a day brimming with promise and hope and, yes, romance.

So on this splendid day three weeks before the Kentucky Derby down the road at Churchill Downs, here was Patti Cooksey, a 45-year-old mother, riding a Thoroughbred named Ide Rather Not. Here was Patti Cooksey, who only last year made a courageous comeback from breast cancer, trying to figure a way to win.

At this point we will pause to pay homage to jockeys, the most underrated and underappreciated athletes in the sporting world. Think about what it must take, in terms of strength and courage and timing and co-ordination and discipline, to be able to ride a 1,000-pound animal traveling around 35 miles-per-hour in tight quarters with other horses.

But don't think too long or too hard. There's a reason why jockeys are the only athletes who have an ambulance follow them as they do their work.

So here was Patti Cooksey on a lovely spring day, looking to win another race. As in many other sports, the baggage of being a role model can weigh heavily on a female athlete. It's always there, lurking in the background of any important victory, when all the woman wants to do, really, is be judged not on her gender but on her ability to compete.

She's riding, her horse moving powerfully beneath her. Maybe she has a shot, maybe she doesn't. But because she's Patti Cooksey, she's going to get whatever the horse has to give.

Suddenly here's the rail jutting out on her left. She has nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. No options. Nothing except the bleak certainty that something painful is about to happen.

Her mount hit the rail and went down, starting a chain reaction that caused two trailing horses to stumble and falter. Blessedly, all three horses and both the other jockeys escaped serious injury. But here was Patti Cooksey, a crumpled heap lying in the dust writhing in pain, on that marvelous day and the crowd - so full of joy and hope at the race's start - fell silent.

As emergency medical technicians were trying to tend to Cooksey, one of the horses involved in the incident, the riderless Classikas, had circled the track and came pounding down the rail again, heading for Cooksey's shattered body and her medical attendants.

It was an unspeakable disaster in the making. But, blessedly, the horse jumped over Cooksey and continued on his frenzied way until finally being apprehended.

"I tried to divert him," EMS technician Will Lockridge told Dave Koerner of the Louisville, Ky. Courier-Journal. "Then I realized he wasn't going to change his course."

As Patti said yesterday, wearing her Blue Grass Stakes cap and smiling from her hospital bid, "It could have been a lot worse."

In the stories about Patti's lastest misfortune, you will read about her victories and records and milestones. She and Julie Krone are the two most successful female jockeys ever to grace a sport heavily tilited in favor of males.

But the stories won't tell you about how beautiful she looked, laying in that hospital bed with her husband, daughter and mother nearby.

Her left femur and right tibia were fractured. The pain had to be far more than she was willing to admit, even considering her medication. Yet Patti Cooksey was able to work up a smile and say, "I wonder when I can ride again?"

The mere fact that she even thought about it, less than 24 hours after being in peril of losing her life, is testimony to her courage, her spirit, and her love for her work. But it also says something, difficult though it is to express, about the special love that some people have for horses and America's oldest professional sport.

At this point, it doesn't really make any difference if Patti ever gets to ride again. Her place in racing history is secure. But having dodged breast cancer and escaped injuries more serious than two broken legs, she will be forced to make the most difficult decision of her life.

"I don't like to think I'll go out like this," she said.

Many of her fans and loved ones probably hope she'll finally hang it up. Yet there's also something appealling about seeing Patti Cooksey in the saddle one more time, win or lose.

She is no Arcaro or Shoemaker, the icons whose talent always earned them the best horses. But, in a way, the numbers and statistics aside, she's just as important. She came along when female jockeys were abused by their peers and the public. She set the standards for female riders that Julie Krone surpassed.

And now here she was, lying there in her hospital bed with her husband and daughter nearby, and wondering if she might have a last hurrah, a signature moment, an emphatic punctuation mark to the end of her remarkable career. Sunlight drifted through the windows of her hospital room. She eagerly took a program from the day's races at Keeneland to check the fields and see who was riding what horses.

Her only Kentucky Derby mount, So Vague in 1984, finished 11th to Swale in 1984. Female jockeys and trainers get very few opportunities to be involved with the wealthiest owners and the best-bred stock. Yet they still harbor the same dreams as their male rivals.

Lying there in her hospital bed, her legs shattered and a Blue Grass Stakes cap on her head, Patti Cooksey smiled. Eventually the vagaries of racing luck and the inevitabilities of life will beat her in a photo.

But not now. Not this way. Everyone should have the right to leave their life's work on their own terms. After all she has been through, enduring all the pain and fright and uncertainty, she's still grateful to her God for allowing her to live.

That is Patti Cooksey. That is racetrackers. That's why that eternal optimism, in the face of certain failure, makes racing an affair of the heart instead of a sport or a business.

Or, as Patti said from her hospital bed, "Do you think I'll be able to make the Derby?"

Native Kentuckian William F. Reed has been a sports writer in various capacities for 43 years and has missed covering the Kentucky Derby a mere two times since 1966. He has been a high-profile sports writer in Kentucky for the Commonwealth's two largest daily newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader and was a national columnist for Sports Illustrated, covering among other sports, Thoroughbred horse racing and college basketball. Reed currently pens a column for the Louisville Sports Report and covered Kentucky Derby 128 for kentuckyderby.com. He will be filing frequent installments for CDSN's (Churchill Downs Simulcasting Network) websites throughout 2003.

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