Southern California horsemen mourn Gomez

The racing world Thursday mourned the passing of riding great Garrett Gomez who was found dead Wednesday in his hometown of Tucson, Arizona. According to several media reports, Gomez, who had been living primarily in Tucson the past two years, was discovered dead at a casino/hotel he had checked into on tribal land near Tucson.

Gomez would have been 45 on New Year’s Day.

A remarkable talent who was regarded as perhaps the strongest finisher of his era, Gomez was America’s leading rider by money won four consecutive years, from 2006 through 2009. He was voted America’s Eclipse Award champion jockey in 2007 and 2008 and was selected by a vote of jockeys nationwide as winner of Santa Anita’s George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award in 2011.

The son of a jockey, Louie Gomez, Garrett last rode at Keeneland in October 2013. He won 3,769 career races and along with agent Ron Anderson, set a single-season record in 2007 by winning 76 added-money races. The following year his mounts accounted for a career high $23,344,351, just $10,000 shy of Jerry Bailey’s all-time single season record.

An avid golfer, Gomez, who along with his second wife, Pam, owned a home in nearby Duarte, is survived by four children, a son, Collin, and a daughter, Shelby, from his first marriage, and by a daughter, Amanda, and son, Jared, from his second.

“It’s sad,” former contemporary Gary Stevens said. “He’s at peace now. He was as good a rider as I’ve ever ridden with, a helluva guy and a helluva a competitor. I didn’t like getting beat but when he showed up, he was on his game.

“The ride he put up on Blame (defeating Zenyatta by a dramatic head in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic for her lone defeat), he wasn’t healthy when he rode her. He had fallen and I know he was hurting that day, but that’s the kind of athlete he was. He rose to the occasion and overcame pain and was able to get the job done.”