Pat Day, the jockey who made the Breeders’ Cup a classic

It’s been 15 years since the jockey who Hall of Famer Mike Smith describes as “almost like Michael Jordan” retired from a sport where he left an everlasting impression.

Pat Day, who won more than 70 riding titles in his Hall of Fame career — including 56 fall and spring riding titles at Churchill Downs and Keeneland combined — will be interviewed Tuesday by University of Louisville Equine Industry Program Director Sean Beirne as part of a University of Louisville Equine Program Fall Speaker Series supported by Horse Racing Nation.

The interview will cover Day’s career and will be broadcast on the Horse Racing Nation Facebook page via Facebook Live beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET.

The interview is expected to cover Day’s great racing moments, including some that helped shape the Breeders’ Cup Championships, which just concluded at Keeneland.

Day has stayed involved with racing as president of the Kentucky Race Track Chaplaincy since retiring in 2005. He helped make the Breeders’ Cup an institution with his unforgettable and improbable ride aboard Wild Again at 31-1 in the inaugural 1984 Breeders’ Cup Classic in one of the sport’s greatest stretch battles.

Day still ranks fourth among North American jockeys in wins and earnings. His 12 Breeders’ Cup victories were once the standard, though they have since been surpassed. His four wins in the Classic are tied for second most.

He and Eddie Arcaro are the only two jockeys with at least five Preakness wins and three Belmont Stakes wins. His 8,803 wins with a 22% win percentage mirror the 8,833 wins and 22% win rate of Bill Shoemaker, to whom he has been compares.

The following is a trip down memory lane that Day shared about his life and racing career during an interview with writer Nathan Mayberg:

Where it all began

The foundation for Day’s career began in Colorado. He learned to care for horses on the family farm while becoming a state champion wrestler.

Day wrestled at between 93 and 95 pounds. He weighed 103 when he retired from racing.

His dad ran an auto body shop and had a five-acre farm. “He wanted us to have responsibilities early on,” Day said of his father’s wishes for him and his three siblings.

“My mother and father (Mickey and Carol) thought that was the best way to keep us out of trouble,” Day said.

Around second grade, Day saddled up on his first pony — who took off. “I was hanging on for dear life,” he said. When the pony settled down, Day jumped into his dad’s arms. His father told him to get back on him. “That was the last thing I wanted to do,” Day said. “He didn’t give that spirit of fear the opportunity to take root.”

Later, his father bought a quarter horse and an Arabian mare.

“Our neighbors didn’t mind if we rode across their property,” Day said. Through that property, he had access to thousands of acres of government land for riding.

By the time Day was 9, he was participating in rodeos. “I really wanted to be a professional bull rider,” he said. The most important thing he learned from riding bulls was how to fall, which helped him largely avoid serious injury as a jockey.

Riding bulls didn’t provide steady income. After working in his family’s gas station and in a Wyoming oil field, he went to California at 19 to get his start as a jockey. He had never seen a race. “I really didn’t have a plan. I knew nothing about it,” Day said. 

He worked on trainer Farrell Jones’ horse farm on a premise that after two to three years, he could become a jockey.

“Patient Pat,” as some would later call him for his riding style, didn’t intend to wait.

He relocated to Arizona and went from galloping horses at Prescott Downs to winning a riding title there within a year’s time. 

A star was born.

“I was so blessed with natural ability to communicate with horses to get them to do what I wanted them to do with minimal encouragement,” Day said. “I had a sixth sense.”

From Arizona, he went to the California fair circuit and Sportsman’s Park in Chicago.

“I was an arrogant winner,” he said. “It came so fast and easy.”

By 1976, he was riding in New York at Belmont Park. In his first year, he earned his first Grade 1 victory aboard Great Contractor in the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Day had marked the race and its $300,000 purse on his calendar. He remembers being on the podium ABC’s Jim McKay after winning and saying, “that was my race.”

Day looks back and says he was “an arrogant little pinhead” at the time. “It breaks my heart at how arrogant I was that day,” he said.

“I think I was too dumb, too naive to be intimidated” said Day of a New York jockey colony that included Hall of Famers Braulio Baeza, Angel Cordero, Eddie Maple, Ron Turcotte, Jacinto Vasquez and Jorge Velasquez.

Within a year he had runs-ins with Cordero at Saratoga and Velasquez at Aqueduct. Day said he and Cordero raised fists. “We were both a little hot-headed,” Day said. “Nobody got hurt.”

He left New York after the fall of 1977. He was just getting started.

A stop in Louisiana led to marriage in 1979, which “had a really stabilizing effect on me,” Day said of his wife, Sheila.

In 1981, Day won the first of four riding titles at Arlington Park, setting a national record there in 1989 with nine winners on a single card.

In 1982, Day won the first of three straight national leading rider titles and six overall. He also won the first of 12 straight riding titles at Oaklawn Park.

Smith was a teenage apprentice in the early 1980s at Oaklawn Park, where he developed a friendship with Day. One afternoon, Day won a race and Smith ran second. After galloping out, Day told Smith he could have won if he had gotten his horse to switch leads. “He gave me three different tips” on switching leads, Smith said. “He loved to teach.”

In 1983, Day returned to Saratoga and won the first of four Travers Stakes (G1), with Play Fellow. He rallied from far back to catch Cordero and Slew o'Gold. Day bested Cordero and Slew o'Gold the next year on Wild Again in the Breeders' Cup Classic.

Months before his win with Wild Again, Day said, he felt a “void in my heart.”

After his second straight national riding title, Day was high on life in January 1984.

Day was about to meet a destiny that would forever change his life.

After flying to Florida to ride at Hialeah Park, Day was in his hotel room flipping through the television channels. He stopped at a sermon from Jimmy Swaggart, turned the television off and fell asleep. “I didn't think what he was preaching from the pulpit was what I wanted or needed,” Day said.

“I woke up after what felt like a long time. I had a feeling I wasn’t by myself” though he didn’t see anyone. “I turned the TV on. As the picture materialized, I hadn’t been sleeping long,” Day said. Swaggart was having an altar call. “It was almost as if the scales were lifted from my eyes,” Day said.

“I went and cried and invited Christ into my life, never to be the same again. I don’t know how long I was on the floor.”

Before then, Day said he drank every night and had been using drugs. 

On the plane home, the stewardess asked him what he would be drinking. “A voice kind of barked at her and said no,” Day said. He had never heard the voice before. His normal response would have been to ask for two drinks because, he said, “you never know how long it will take the stewardess to come around again.” He believed a higher power interfered. He quit drinking. “I have not done any drugs since.”

Day thought about leaving racing and attending a seminary but stayed riding.

“I was racing for the lord,” Day said. “The Bible says do all that you do with all of your heart as if you were doing it for the lord.”

His new persona was one that became “full of love” for people. “When I invited Christ into my heart, I became a new creature,” he said.

Day said he saw a “hurting humanity that's in need of hope.”

Day does not credit his born-again moment for a newfound racing talent.

He found “the grass was greener. The world hadn't changed. I had changed.”

Day believes the revelations improved his mental attitude about dealing with defeat. When he won, he would say “hallelujah.” When he lost, he would say the same.

“It eliminated the fear of failure,” Day said. “Previous to coming to Christ, if I won I was as high as the moon. If I lost, I went just as far the other way. When I came home, my wife knew if I won or lost the race.”

After the revelation, Day immediately thought of the Kentucky Derby. “But I didn't win the Derby.”

Day rode Vanlandingham in the 1984 Kentucky Derby, finishing 16th for Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey. The first Breeders’ Cup was months away.

He went to ride at Hollywood Park a few days prior to the Breeders' Cup. That year, the circumference of the track was extended from one mile to 1 1/8 miles. Despite having ridden Wild Again to wins in the New Orleans Handicap (G2) and Razorback Handicap (G2), Day initially was not named on Wild Again for the Classic. Day left the jockey's room to go page Wild Again's trainer Vincent Timphony. On his way out, he ran into the colt's owners. “They saw me. I said, 'can I?' And they said, 'will you?' ”

Day said Wild Again “blew out nice” the day before the race. “I'll be honest, I thought he was up against it. I thought they were silly.” Wild Again had to be supplemented into the richest race in history for $360,000 for a chance at a $3 million purse.

Day put Wild Again in a duel in between horses and emerged with the lead after a quarter mile. In the stretch, it appeared Cordero and Slew o' Gold would surely go by him, and then Hall of Famer Laffit Pincay and Gate Dancer as well. Day famously tapped Wild Again just once with the whip at the top of the lane, hand-riding him to the wire despite two fierce competitors breathing down his neck.

“I don't think there was another rider in the world that would have won on Wild Again that day,” Day said. “I don't think there is another rider who wouldn't have been tempted to flip that stick up.

“If I had gotten him beat, there would have been a whole lot of people crying, ‘If you just whipped him!’ ”

Day said he only struck Wild Again once because he was prone to leaning out. “I knew he was giving me his very best,” Day said. “Wild Again ran the race of his life. He was throwing divots 20 feet in the air.”

Day had solidified his status as one of the sport's best jockeys.

Smith said Day’s ride on Wild Again was an example of how he could send out a horse on the lead, give it a breather and save something extra for the stretch. Smith said Day had a skill in “getting a horse to relax without grabbing a hold of them.”

Day’s versatility in coming off the pace or to “get a horse to come back” on the lead with “the prettiest left hand you’ve ever seen” set him apart, Smith said.

Tank’s Prospect, Day’s first Triple Crown winner in the 1985 Preakness for Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, was “a great example,” Smith said.

In the final quarter of a mile, Tank's Prospect had a lot of ground to make up. With strong encouragement, Day got the son of Mr. Prospector to run down favored Chief's Crown in the final jump. “That never would have been acceptable today,” Day said of the recent changes in crop rules.

“It was extremely special,” Day said of the victory.

His win on Tank’s Prospect was the first of five Classic wins he enjoyed with Lukas.

“Pat was an artist at adapting to horses he had never been on,” Lukas said.

Lukas called him a “role model” for young riders. “The world needs to know more about him,” he said. “If I had one guy I want to be a role model, it would be Pat Day.”

Lukas said Day gave “maximum effort every time. It doesn’t matter if it’s the third race on Wednesday or the Breeders’ Cup.” Day “comes to work,” Lukas said. “He had an uncanny and extraordinary ability to relax a horse.”

Before 1985 was out, Day would reunite with Vanlandingham for a win in the Jockey Club Gold Cup (G1) at Belmont Park, the second of three wins in the race for Day.

In 1986, Day earned the second of four Eclipse awards. He rode his first Hall of Famer, Lady's Secret. Day guided the Lukas filly and Secretariat’s best daughter to six Grade 1 wins, topped by the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, a win over boys in the Whitney and Horse of the Year honors.

After the Distaff, Shoemaker (who ran second) was asked on national television for his assessment of Day: “Well, he rides awfully good. I don't know if I ride as good as he does.”

Lukas said Day was able to “set a horse very quietly.”

In 1987, Day came out of the clouds in a downpour at Saratoga to win the Travers aboard Java Gold. Day settled Java Gold over a dozen lengths off the pace behind a stunning cast that included Temperate Sil, Bet Twice, Cryptoclearance, Polish Navy, Alysheba and Gulch. Day and Java Gold never entered the camera’s view until the stretch and ran away from the field. “He would run over anything,” Day said.

Day and Java Gold beat older horses in the Whitney Handicap two weeks earlier and captured the last running of the G1 Marlboro Cup Invitational Stakes at Belmont Park.

Day’s success on the turf may have surprised some because Churchill Downs and Keeneland didn’t run grass races until 1985 and Oaklawn Park had no turf.

In 1987, Day guided Theatrical to six Grade 1 wins on the turf, culminating in a Breeders' Cup Turf victory in Day’s trademark quality. After gaining the lead on the far turn, Day gave Theatrical a breather. “He carried me to the lead off the turn,” Day recalled of Theatrical. He was looking for Trempolino, that year's Arc de Triomphe winner. Day let Trempolino pass him in the stretch before asking Theatrical to run. “I didn't expect that I would run away from him,” Day said.

Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott, who conditioned Theatrical, called Day “one of the best.”

Mott said the way Day allowed Trempolino to get on even terms with him in the stretch was an example of his “tremendous amount of confidence. The horses sense that.”

Mott said Day got Theatrical, a high-strung horse who could be erratic, to settle. “A large part of Theatrical’s success was due to Pat,” Mott said. “He had a patient, quiet style. Horses ran for him.”

Mott said another example of Day’s ability to relax a horse was his win in the Blue Grass Stakes (G1) in 1984 with Taylor’s Special, whom he called “basically a sprinter.”

In the 1988 Kentucky Derby, Day had the first of his three straight runner-up finishes in the race, aboard the Woody Stephens-trained Forty Niner. He fell just short of catching Lukas’ Hall of Fame filly Winning Colors after a determined stretch run.

A day earlier, Day gained the first of two Kentucky Oaks wins, riding Goodbye Halo for Hall of Famer Charles Whittingham. Little did he know that a future Hall of Fame colt from Whittingham’s barn named Sunday Silence would be his greatest challenge yet.

- Check back tomorrow for part 2 of this series on Pat Day.