From slump to career Triple Crown: Castellano is thankful

Elmont, N.Y.

If Javier Castellano was out late Saturday night celebrating the completion of his career Triple Crown, he did not look like a bleary-eyed partier the morning after. He looked as bright as the day.

“I feel great,” he said between training rides Sunday morning. Then he confessed, “I couldn’t sleep much. I had to wake up early to work some horses. We go late last night, but everything is so good. What a year.”

Fifty mornings earlier, Castellano was 0-for-15 in the Kentucky Derby and 0-for-14 in the Belmont Stakes. He had two Preakness wins, but there were those two big holes on his Hall of Fame résumé.

Not anymore.

First came the win on Mage in the Derby, and then Saturday’s victory aboard Arcangelo in the Belmont. Overshadowed by Jena Antonucci becoming the first woman to train a U.S. classic winner was the fact Castellano, 45, had completed a career Triple Crown.

“It’s amazing,” Castellano said while standing on the tree-lined backside at Belmont Park. “God is good, and God has always blessed me to be around here and in my career. I think I can walk away and say I did it. Hall of Fame. Career Triple Crown. Six Travers. Hall of Fame. Four Eclipse Awards. Twelve Breeders’ Cups. I did it all.”

Not that he is thinking about retiring. Far from it. But Castellano has rebounded from a nadir that saw him go through 2022 without a single ride in a Triple Crown race. One spring later he not only had the rides, but his two wins were sandwiched around a third-place finish on Mage in the Preakness.

There clearly was a rough patch for Castellano, who was the first jockey to be diagnosed with COVID just as the outbreak became a pandemic. Then came hip surgery that same year that cost him three months. It also cost him good rides and the confidence of trainers.

“It’s a tough game,” Castellano said. “You never take anything for granted. Thank God I’ve been very successful. I’ve won a lot of races and four times with the Eclipse Award. It’s not like in the fourth year in a row, I could just have a good year. No. I did it four years in a row when it’s hard to do, to maintain that level where we are.”

It was in the middle of that 2013-16 run of riding championships when Castellano appeared to have peaked. In a career that has seen him stack up nearly $385 million in race earnings, he reached a high of $28.1 million in 2015. But since 2020, his best year was only as high as nearly $12.5 million.

“I had a little bump in my career,” he said. “It was a slump like every athlete goes through. But the good thing at my point is you never give up. If you want to be successful in your career, in your life, you’ve got to work hard. If you work hard, and you be disciplined, you’ve just got to have the resolve, no matter what. It’s a cycle, up and down. I’m lucky enough that they gave me like another second opportunity.”

Castellano went through a few agents since 2020. John Panagot was replaced by Steve Rushing, who was replaced by P.J. Campo. It was Campo who convinced trainers like Todd Pletcher, Shug McGaughey and Mike Maker to take another look at Castellano, who began his climb again.

“Two years ago I was very frustrated to have to knock on the doors, and the doors didn’t open,” Castellano said. “They didn’t give the opportunity to me, but little by little, I’m getting back again to where I was. I’m looking forward to where I want to be.”

New faces like Antonucci with Arcangelo and Gustavo Delgado with Mage would come into Castellano’s sphere, and the results have spoken for themselves with victories that eluded him even at his peak.

“The two biggest races that I missed in my career,” Castellano said with the hint of an emotional catch in his throat. “I’m blessed that God gave me the gift to win these big races. How fortunate I am.”

What Castellano brought last week was the savvy to teach a horse how to race around a second turn. Arcangelo never had done that before, putting him in rare air as a Belmont winner who never before had gone beyond one turn let alone stretch to 1 1/2 miles.

“It’s too much to ask of a horse,” Castellano said, “but he’s a special 3-year-old. He doesn’t have a foundation. He doesn’t have experience to get that level. Remember, the rest of the horses, they’ve been racing for the Kentucky Derby, and then they’re in the Derby, the Preakness. They’re developing a good foundation. This horse didn’t have the opportunity. He did it himself. He proved he belonged to the group. He deserved to win the race.”

But he was being a bit modest. Antonucci said when Arcangelo trained Tuesday, Castellano “gave him one little chirp, and he got more for that second turn” in the gallop-out from a 48.8-second half-mile.

“I was afraid to ask him,” Castellano said, “because if I asked him, he would go like a bullet. That’s not the goal. The goal is to let him build a foundation, because you’ve got to face the long distance of a mile-and-a-half, and you don’t want the horse to get tired.”

Although he might have used an old trick to keep Arcangelo focused on the task he had to carry out around a second turn, Castellano praised Antonucci for doing the real work to prepare the Arrogate ridgling to accept the bigger task Saturday.

“I give all the credit to Jena the way he handled it,” Castellano said. “She prepared the horse to put him to that level to face the mile-and-a-half with the bigger horses.”

As for his role in the victory, he was even more modest.

“I was just the pilot. I’ll be honest,” Castellano said. “She did a good job to train the horse to the biggest races.”