Mike Smith © Benoit Photo
This Saturday, August 10, Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith will celebrate his birthday. Like most 59-year-olds, he’ll probably go to work and then afterward celebrate with a few family and friends, maybe get a phone call or text from a close acquaintance with well wishes and a jab about his advancing age. Most likely, at one point, he’ll enjoy a piece of birthday cake.
Then the next day he’ll get up in the morning, go to the gym for an hour or two, spend a little extra time on the treadmill to burn off that piece of cake and in the afternoon, unlike most 59-year-olds, Mike Smith will climb aboard a 12-hundred pound animal, coax it to go as fast as it can and, as he’s done on more than few occasions every summer for the past three decades, he will beat fellow jockeys that are half – or a third of - his age.
Which raises the question, what other sport is there where a 59-year-old beats fellow 20-and-30-year-old competitors? The answer is none. Yet it happens regularly every summer at Del Mar.
“I’m so competitive I really don’t think about it that much,” Smith notes. “I don’t really put an age on myself when I’m out there riding against them. I’ve been blessed with a lot of time and a lot of experience doing that. Look, I don’t do the running. I don’t have to be faster than them. I just have to be riding a horse that is.”
And in a career that spans 42 years now, Smith has been on the faster horse. 5,754 times to be exact. He has won every big race and top award available in horse racing. Eclipse Awards, riding titles, Kentucky Derbies, Breeders’ Cups, even a Triple Crown with Justify in 2018. All of which earned him a spot in the Racing Hall of Fame way back in 2003.
So what is behind Smith’s remarkable longevity in a sport that more times than not literally wears a jockey’s body down. It started one day when he went to play golf with a group of friends.
“I sucked at golf,” Smith admits. “I tried to play golf with my friends in my early twenties and I just couldn’t get the hang of it for whatever reason. But I think it was the best thing to happen to me because I just said ‘To hell with you all. You go play golf. I’m going to the gym.’ I just got better, fitter, faster and stronger. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
“I made it a way of life,” Smith continues. “I average five days a week (in the gym) since my early twenties. There will be periods when you’re sick or you have to travel but I would say a good 90 percent of my life since then I’ve been in the gym.”
Mike Smith was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1965. He was raised in a little farming town called Dexter, about 15 miles outside of Roswell. He’s been around horses all his life.
“Since I can remember,” Smith contends. “I don’t remember not having them around. I was raised on a ranch and my grandfather and uncle had horses. My uncle broke babies and got them ready for the track. I was always around him and started working with my uncle. When he decided to leave the training center and go out on his own, I went with him. I was about 14 or 15.”
He galloped horses until it was time to start riding. That came in 1982 and then he got the opportunity to ride for some other people as well and that’s how he got going, riding New Mexico tracks at first.
“For about half of my apprentice season,” Smith says. “Then I spent the other half in Hot Springs, Arkansas and Omaha, Nebraska. Everywhere I was…was the greatest place I’ve been. I was just so excited to be around horses and the game of horse racing it didn’t matter where I was at, it was the greatest place I’d ever been, especially if I was winning.”
Smith bounced around the Midwest until 1989 when he moved his tack to New York and it wasn’t long before he was winning riding titles and competing toe-to-toe with the likes of Jerry Bailey, Pat Day, John Velazquez, Jorge Chavez, Shane Sellers, and, for a short time, Angel Cordero.
He won his first Breeders’ Cup race in 1992 on Lure in the Mile. He has gone on to win 26 more, the most by any jockey far and away; seven more than runner-up John Velazquez. Smith won his first Triple Crown race in 1993 on Prairie Bayou in the Preakness.
“I like to think I’m pretty well rounded as a rider,” Smith says. “Not just one dimensional where I’m just a speed rider or come from behind or dirt or turf. I just feel I get along with horses really well. I tend to understand them more than I understand myself at times.”
It’s the interaction with the horses that helps him get out of bed and to the race track every morning.
“When you can get a horse that size and that fast and that powerful and get him to do things for you with just your fingers, there’s just nothing better. We all love to win, that’s certainly a big part of the sport. But just to get the opportunity to communicate with and be around them and ride them. There’s nothing better.”
Mike Smith winning aboard First Peace © Benoit Photo
Ask Smith what he attributes his success to and he finds it hard to answer.
“There’s so much to that,” he notes. “It’s not just one thing.”
But then he remembers the model of Claiborne Farms: ‘Just do the usual unusually well.’
“Doing all the little things better than everyone else,” Smith explains. “It’s very important. It’s all the little things that make the game work. When you become a professional athlete and you go into a slump, the first thing you do is go back to the basics. Just learning all the simple things. No matter how good or how long you’ve been in it you’ll tend to stop doing them at certain times in your career. So it’s just doing all those little things really well.”
He also never forgot the advice he learned from mother growing up.
“I remember my mom always saying ‘Be careful who you hang out with. Always surround yourself with good people, the right people and you’ll be okay.’ That’s people you can depend on and trust. People who have the same goals and visions or have already been there. I’ve always tried to do that. If I get into a slump, I go back to hanging around with the right people and stay there until they give you a shot again.”
Mike Smith (lower left) © Benoit Photo
In 2001, despite being on top of his game in New York, he packed up his tack and moved to Southern California.
“When I was young I always thought I would come out west,” Smith says, “being from New Mexico. But my career took me to the Midwest and to the east which was amazing and great, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I loved being in New York and riding there. I got to ride with some of the greatest of greats and learned a whole bunch. I had a lot of success there. I did really well.”
Most riders will change their location because business is down. They switch to a new track in hopes of reviving their careers. Mike Smith did just the opposite.
“I got hurt in 1998,” Smith recalls, “and came back and struggled for a bit. I hired a new agent out here from California, Brian Beach, and I told him ‘I want to continue to stay in the east coast until I got back rolling again.’ I didn’t want to leave not doing well. Brian came out and we went to work and I became the second leading rider at Gulfstream. Then we went back into New York and we were second or third there and doing really well. That’s when I said, ‘Okay, now we can leave if you want to go back’.”
It wasn’t Smith’s first time riding at Del Mar. He had come out for a few money races over the year. But in his first full season at the seaside oval he finished in the Top Ten in the jockey standings with 23 victories.
“I wanted to give it a try,” Smith says of moving his tack out west. “Plus, I wanted to be closer to my family. In that stage of the game I had been so blessed to do so well in New York and I wanted to try California and see what there was out there. I was blessed to have a Hall of Fame career in the east and then super blessed to have one out in the west. God has been great to me in all aspects of life but I’ve really been blessed with a really good career. I wouldn’t trade it with anyone.”
In 2005, Smith won his first Kentucky Derby on Giacomo.
There’s an old saying by the great pitcher, Satchel Paige, that asks: “If you didn’t know how old you are, how old are you?”
“On my good days I would be in my mid-thirties,” Smith answers.
He attributes his longevity directly to the decision he made years ago to hire a personal trainer.
“I have a bit of OCD,” Smith admits, “so I have to have a personal trainer or else I would spend three hours in a gym, spend too much time in there actually. Whenever I would start on my own I would either wear myself out or hurt myself. So, when I started using personal trainers it really helped me a lot.”
Smith has two personal trainers, one at Santa Anita and one at Del Mar.
“They’ve both been with me for a very long time,” Smith reveals. “They give me endurance splits without putting any weight on me. Keep me strong. I do my own cardio like hiking, running, or riding a bike. Whatever it may be, I switch off on that.
“There was a time when I was younger I would have lifted but I don’t really need to do that anymore,” Smith continues. “It tends to put a little more weight on me. Right now I’m able to tack 120 (pounds) very comfortably and I like where I’m at right now.”
Maybe one of Smith’s best traits, one that has helped him get through the daily rigors of a jockey’s life, is that he is not a big eater.
“When I’m riding regularly and training a lot, I eat just one meal a day,” Smith states. “I might munch on something here and there and drink a lot of water. On my days off I might have a light lunch and then a light dinner and that’s about it. I try to eat as healthy as possible. I splurge every now and then but, when I do, I pay for it. I have to run farther the next day.”
There’s a story that makes the rounds every year at Del Mar about a group of young riders that asked Mike if they could join him in his workout and that halfway through the exercise all but one had thrown in the towel. Smith would not confirm nor deny the story but then again, he would be the last to ridicule anyone who tries to keep up with him.
“I’ve been doing it since I was 20 so I have a huge advantage,” Smith says. “I don’t care how young and fit you are, if you haven’t lifted you’re going to get tired. You can train and catch up, it depends on how hard you want to train. You’ll get ahead of me if you want, if you push yourself hard enough.”
The smart young riders are the ones who come to Smith and ask for advice and he’s more than happy to share his knowledge and experience.
“I encourage all young riders to add personal training into their regimen,” Smith says, “besides just riding or just running on their own. Play golf. Do it all. Get a good personal trainer and hit the gym twice a week. I think there’s an importance to it. I think it will add years to their careers.”
There will be a time when Smith will have to hang it up. There aren’t too many guys out there like Perry Ouzts, who just turned 70 last month and still rides. On the subject of retirement, Smith has things in perspective.
“I’m enjoying myself right now, I really am,” he contends. “Father Time catches up with everybody and when that day comes and I get to thinking ‘I’m getting in the way,’ then that’s the time I’ll call it a career. But I still think I’m holding my own really well and hell, I still think I can make a difference. I’m my own worse critic so I’ll know when because I’m tough on myself.”
And that is why Mike Smith is still riding – and riding very well - on his 59th birthday.
