Remembering Randy Romero
/By Bill Heller
Hall of Fame jockey Randy Romero began winning races when he was nine years old—races at the bush tracks of rural Louisiana before hundreds of witnesses with lots of money on the line. If it was too much pressure for a little kid, he never showed it. He rode the rest of his life that way, seemingly impervious to the pressure of big stakes races and in defiance of a litany of serious injuries that would lead to life-long illness that he battled until the day he passed on August 29th.
He was 13 when he fell while working a horse and fractured his kneecap. Three years later, he had his first serious accident at Evangeline Downs. Another horse came over on Randy’s horse, who went down. Randy was trampled on by multiple horses. It punctured his lung, liver and kidney; and doctors would have to remove his spleen. He was unconscious for two days. When he awoke in the hospital, his mother begged him to stop riding. He told her, “Momma, I want to be a jockey.”
He was born to ride. When he retired at the end of 1999, he was the 26th leading jockey ever with 4,294 victories despite missing some six years from injuries. He won 25 riding titles at 10 different tracks including Arlington Park, Belmont Park, Fair Grounds and Keeneland.
What would his numbers have been if he only missed two or three years? Or if he hadn’t been nearly burned to death in 1983 in a freak accident in a sweatbox? Randy flicked off a piece of rubbing alcohol on his shoulder and it hit a light bulb and caused the sweatbox to explode. Randy suffered second and third degree burns over 60 percent of his body. Doctors gave him a 40-percent chance of surviving. He was back riding in 3 ½ months and won his first race back on a horse trained by his brother Gerald.
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