BROTHER'S HELPER INJURY HASN'T KEPT HENDRICKS FROM SUCCESSFUL TRAINING CAREER
Kevin Modesti, Columnist
L.A. Daily News
ARCADIA - When a veteran horse trainer with a Kentucky Derby favorite in the barn laughs at the mention of pressure, you know something about him is different.
For Dan Hendricks, who hopes to see Brother Derek clinch the favorite's role for the first Saturday in May by winning the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby on Saturday, it has all been different since a rare Thursday away from the racetrack during the Hollywood Park season in July 2004.
That morning, he went to check up on baby thoroughbreds at a Riverside County farm. That afternoon, he went to the Starwest Motocross Park in Perris to have fun riding his dirt bike.
On a corner of the course he had negotiated hundreds of times, he took a jump badly and came down wrong. The impact pitched him forward and he landed hard on his head and neck.
He was in the back of an ambulance in a flash and at the hospital in minutes. A doctor could offer him nothing but the details.
"I knew exactly what happened," Hendricks said this week. "(I'd) totally messed everything up. My job, my life, everything."
The fall crushed his T3 vertebra, instantly causing paralysis from the chest down. It would take hours of surgery to stabilize the spine and weeks of physical therapy to learn how to do simple things such as taking showers and getting in and out of cars.
Like Bill Shoemaker, the great jockey who was paralyzed in a car crash in retirement, Hendricks had survived 30 years of galloping horses for a living, only to be injured practicing a hobby. The fact he came from a family of daredevils - his father Lee and uncle Byron having been rodeo trick riders in the 1950s - didn't make the catastrophe any easier to take.
| The Kentucky Derby? "As great a horse race as it is, it's just a horse race," Hendricks said. |
After relying on his wife Samantha and his staff to run the barn while he was away, Hendricks was back at the track at Del Mar the following month in a thick-tired wheelchair and would eventually be able to sit on a pony in a specially constructed saddle. He couldn't have realized what an adventure lay ahead or how his condition would change his emotions about it.
Hendricks had always wondered about owners who sat in the box seats and complained about how their horses ran.
"I've always said, `If you can sit in the grandstand of a racetrack, let alone watching your own horse run, you (shouldn't) have any complaints,' " Hendricks said. "Now I have a perspective that's even more so."
The Kentucky Derby? "As great a horse race as it is, it's just a horse race," Hendricks said in the office of his barn near Santa Anita's 1-mile chute. "You're not in Iraq wondering if you're going to eat or get bombed."
For the 47-year-old Los Angeles native who lives in Glendora with Samantha and their three sons - the family moved to a one-story house and bought a properly equipped minivan after the accident - this realization doesn't seem to have diminished the excitement of managing a 3-year-old colt who goes into the Santa Anita Derby ranked No. 1 in most lists of contenders for the May 6 Kentucky Derby. If anything, it seems to have helped him enjoy it more.
Hendricks' situation certainly has made fellow horsemen cheer Brother Derek's every step as the California-bred owned by Calgary oilman Cecil Peacock has run off a three-race winning streak under jockey Alex Solis.
"You just have to admire somebody who's able to deal with that kind of adversity," said John Shirreffs, who trained Giacomo to win the 2005 Kentucky Derby and has A.P. Warrior in the six-horse Santa Anita Derby.
"Nothing would be sweeter than to see a guy like that win the Derby," said trainer Mike Machowsky, who has known Hendricks since both were assistants to Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella.
Machowsky, speaking before Brother Derek won the Santa Catalina Stakes in March for his fifth victory in a seven-race career, said he thinks Hendricks is training better than ever.
"He's more focused, maybe, because the other things have been taken out of his life," Machowsky said.
And trainer Vladimir Cerin said he used to think of Hendricks as slightly grumpy but found that impression altered when they played poker together one night this winter.
Realizing that dealing cards might be difficult from a wheelchair, the other players took Hendricks' turns. Finally, one time around, Hendricks grabbed the deck.
"Wait, you can deal?" somebody asked.
"Yeah," Hendricks said, "but if you guys wanted to deal for me, I wasn't going to stop you."
Hendricks does not think he's doing his job any better than before the accident. He says it's the purchase of Brother Derek, for $275,000 at a 2-year-olds auction in Pomona, that has made him look good.
"Brother Derek is the best horse I've ever trained," said Hendricks, best known previously for Gray Slewpy, Private Persuasion and Reba's Gold (who was owned by "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek).
Brother Derek has put Hendricks in his first Santa Anita Derby and - assuming he runs well Saturday - his first Kentucky Derby. He's heavily favored at Santa Anita and could be favored at Churchill Downs.
"The pressure of it is minimal in my situation," Hendricks said. "I have a little different outlook."
Kevin Modesti's column appears in the Daily News three days a week.
hey.modesti@aol.com
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