Kent Jason Desormeaux (born February 27, 1970) is an American thoroughbred horse racing Hall of Fame jockey who holds the U.S. record for most races won in a single year with 598 wins in 1989. He has won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes three times each, and the Belmont Stakes once. Aboard Real Quiet, he lost the 1998 Triple Crown by a nose.
From a Cajun family, Desormeaux grew up in a rural farming area located a few miles outside Maurice, Louisiana and attended North Vermilion High School. His brother, J. Keith Desormeaux, older by three years, is a race horse trainer. Desormeaux was a member of the local 4-H club, and was first exposed to race-riding at age 12. "The bush tracks were all around us, and our dad decided he might want to delve into horse racing and bought a bush track Acadiana Downs," explained his brother. "We lived in an agricultural area but we weren't farmers. Even before we got into racing, we all had horses to ride growing up."
Desormeaux was sixteen years old when he began working as an apprentice jockey at the Evangeline Downs racetrack in Lafayette, Louisiana. On July 13, 1986, he rode Miss Tavern to his first career victory. He won his first career stakes race on December 13 of that year, riding Godbey in the Maryland City Handicap at Laurel Park Racecourse. For 1986, he had 55 wins from 525 starts.
His success led him to move north to compete on the Maryland racing circuit, where his winning record earned him the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Apprentice Jockey in 1987. While racing in Maryland from 1987 to 1989, Desormeaux won more races than any other jockey in North America. He is one of only four jockeys to have won three national titles in a row. In 1987, he had 450 wins from 2,207 starts with earnings of $5.1 million. In 1988, he improved to 474 wins from 1,897 starts and earnings of $6.3 million. He got his first mount in the Kentucky Derby in 1988, finishing 16th.
In 1989 Desormeaux won his third jockey title, and set an American record for most wins in a year with 598; the previous record had been 546. The record still stands. That year, Desormeaux competed in 2,312 races, earning $9.1 million. He also won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey. He became the third jockey to win the Eclipse Award in both the apprentice and overall categories, Chris McCarron and Steve Cauthen being the others.
In 1990, he moved to the highly competitive southern California circuit. He later explained, "If I wanted to be in the Kentucky Derby or Breeders' Cup, I had to make a change." Desormeaux would soon win his first major stakes race, the San Juan Capistrano Invitational, then a Grade 1 race at Santa Anita with a purse of $500,000. As a result of the move, Desormeaux's number of wins declined to 220 in 1990, a 60% decrease from 1989. His earnings were less affected, totaling $7.1 million in 1990, a 22% decrease from the year before, a result of the higher purses generally available in California. In 1992, Desormeaux became the regular rider of Best Pal, who put together a string of four graded stakes wins, including the Santa Anita Handicap. He would later call Best Pal his favorite horse to ride. "Best Pal may not have been the fastest horse I ever rode...but what that horse was, was push button."
On December 11, 1992, at Hollywood Park, Desormeaux was thrown when the horse he was riding, Judge Hammer, shied during the stretch drive. He was then kicked in the head by a trailing horse, resulting in multiple skull fractures and a permanent hearing deficit. Prior to the fall, Desormeaux had been on pace to break José A. Santos' then-current earnings record of $14.8 million. Desormeaux fell just short with earnings of $14.1 million, but still won the national earnings title. He also received his second Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey.
On January 23, Desormeaux picked up the mount on Kotashaan. They proceeded to win five Grade 1 races together, culminating in the 1993 Breeders' Cup Turf. At the end of the year his peers voted him the prestigious George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award. One of Desormeaux's infamous moments came when riding Kotashaan in the Japan Cup of 1993. They were about to overtake the leader in the closing stages when Desormeaux sat up on the horse, having misjudged the finish line. The mistake cost roughly $1 million in prize money.
In 1995, Desormeaux, aged 25, became the youngest rider to amass 3,000 victories. That year, he scored his second Breeders' Cup title when he beat the "boys" in the Breeders' Cup Sprint with the filly Desert Stormer. In 1997, at age 27, he was the youngest jockey to surpass $100 million in career earnings.
During the mid-nineties, Desormeaux gradually gained a reputation of not listening to trainers. "There is no doubt that I was on top of the world", Desormeaux said. "No one needed to tell me how to ride a horse. I became very irresponsible with rides. I was immature in a number of situations. I wasn't professional. I didn't pay attention to trainer's instructions, and I wasn't persevering to the wire." He never stopped competing, but his win percentage dropped from 23% in 1992 (364 wins in 1,594 starts) to 17% in 1996 (182 wins in 1,053 starts).
1998–2009: Quest for the Triple Crown
Although he had a great deal of success early in his career, it wasn't until 1998 that he made an impact on the Triple Crown trail. That year, Desormeaux rode Real Quiet to victory in the 1998 Kentucky Derby. "My whole life and career flashed through my mind," he said. "To win the Kentucky Derby -- after having been on top of the world and then falling off the face of the Earth—it was like I was wide-awake inside my most fantastic dream."
He followed this with a victory in the Preakness Stakes. However, Desormeaux lost his bid to win the Triple Crown when Victory Gallop beat Real Quiet by a nose in the final stride in the Belmont Stakes. "It hurts that I'll live in infamy. Who wants to be known for the closest ever to almost win the Triple Crown?" Later that year, he went on to ride the Canadian 3-year-old champion colt Archers Bay to victory in the Queen's Plate, becoming the first jockey since Bill Hartack in 1964 to complete the Kentucky Derby/Queen's Plate double in the same year.
In 2000, Desormeaux won his second Kentucky Derby aboard Fusaichi Pegasus. The two combined to take the Wood Memorial Stakes and Jerome Handicap. "Probably the most talented horse I rode (was) Fusaichi Pegasus," he said in 2004. "What an amazing, amazing, animal that horse was." In 2001, Desormeaux decided to ride in Japan for 10 weeks During this stint, he became the first foreign jockey to win a Classic race in Japan when he rode Lady Pastel to victory in the Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks).
In 2002, Desormeaux had a good year, ranked tenth by total earnings, capped by his second win in the Santa Anita Handicap on Milwaukee Brew. His ranking then dropped to 31st in 2003. In 2004, he won only 104 races, though his earnings were boosted by his first victory in the Arlington Million. He changed his agent, then shuttled between Japan and America in 2005 for several months. By the end of 2005, he'd accumulated 75 North American wins plus 50 wins in Japan. Although he had no grade 1 wins that year, he did guide Zenno Rob Roy to third place in both the Takarazuka Kinen and Japan Cup. On his return, he again changed agents and in 2006 "moved tack" to the east coast.
In 2008, Desormeaux won his third Kentucky Derby aboard Big Brown who won easily by just under five lengths. Two weeks later, Desormeaux rode Big Brown to victory in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course, this time winning by just over five lengths while in hand. With a Triple Crown on the line, Big Brown was made the heavy 3-10 favorite in the Belmont Stakes. Unfortunately, Big Brown broke poorly and was rank for the first quarter mile. He finally settled, but had no response when Desormeaux asked him to run. Desormeaux eased Big Brown after the colt tired at the quarter pole. It was an inexplicably poor performance by a colt who went on to win the Haskell Invitational and Monmouth Park Stakes. Desormeaux received a good deal of criticism for his ride, though some praised him for protecting the colt from potential injury.