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Sports Title: Jockey Martin Garcia completes difficult trek from deli cook to Preakness Stakes winner Martin Garcia's journey from Pleasanton deli cook to Preakness-winning jockey is a sensational, storybook tale. Here comes the sequel. A week from today, he will be riding in New York's Belmont Stakes, aboard the Bob Baffert-trained Game On Dude. "I want to be (the best jockey), and I know it is not easy to be that," Garcia, 25, said Friday in a phone interview. "I've told myself I can do it and that I just need a chance to show I can." He sure put on a show at the Preakness two weeks ago. He rode Lookin At Lucky to victory in that Triple Crown race, posed for pictures in the winner's circle and got interviewed on national television. He looked a million miles away from his childhood home of Veracruz, Mexico. Garcia crossed into the United States in 2003 ("I did what I had to do," he said of his late-night immigration) and eventually moved to Pleasanton. He reunited there with friends from Mexico and later convinced Terri Terry to hire him at Chicago's Metropolitan Deli. "When I go there, I feel home," said Garcia, who will sign autographs at his deli homecoming June 7, two days after the Belmont. "My friend still keeps my bed for me, and I sleep so good in it." Garcia transformed into a jockey not long after persuading Terry to let him ride her 14-year-old thoroughbred mare Finny on a Pleasanton ranch — without a saddle. Next thing you know, he's winning on the Bay Area horse-racing circuit, moving on to Southern California's glitzy tracks and now enjoying debuts this spring at the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and next the Belmont. "He's amazing. It's just a new life for him that he never pictured himself getting," Terry, 47, said. "He's being treated differently after winning the Preakness — in a good way. People treat him like he's a movie star now." Garcia calls Terry the most important person in his life. She showed up with balloons and a hug when she visited him earlier this week at his Monrovia home, not far from the Santa Anita Racetrack. "It's an interesting life that he's had," Terry said. "His mom gave him up at birth. His grandmother (Natalia) raised him, but she passed away a couple years ago. He has a couple uncles, but they don't understand what he's doing. When he's won, he can't talk to them about it because they don't get it." "My grandma, she always wanted our family to have success," Garcia added. "I wish I could share this with her." He insists his increased fame and fortune (actually, he claimed his winnings are modest) haven't changed him, aside from more people wanting to talk to him. Asked if Baffert is a big fan of his, Garcia turned the praise instead on one of racing's most accomplished trainers. In the days leading up to the 1Œ79;3/16-mile Preakness at Pimlico (Md.), Baffert picked Garcia to replace Garrett Gomez aboard Lookin At Lucky, whom Gomez rode to a disappointing sixth-place finish in the 1Œ79;1/4-mile Derby at Churchill Downs. It's finally sinking in it what means to win the Preakness, Garcia noting: "Before, it was just a race. Right now, I really get it." He got his first Triple Crown mount two weeks earlier at the Derby, setting the pace with Conveyance before finishing 15th in the 20-horse field. "The main thing is you've got to be in the lead in the last turn, not in the first turn," said Garcia, who was in Reno on Friday for Lookin At Lucky's birthday bash and an autograph show. At the Belmont, he'll try riding Game On Dude to the same spot they finished in Texas' Lone Star Derby on May 8: First place. "I've got to try to keep the horse up. That's a long distance," Garcia said of the Belmont's 1Œ79;1/2-mile race. "That horse has never run that distance before, but he's been working, and if he goes the same pace, that's what we need." That kind of sounds like Garcia's life story, too. He has made it incredulously far as a jockey through hard work, and he is on a fascinating pace.
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#1. To: Suzanne, mininggold, war, reaganisright (#0)
I didn't realize he was an illegal. I read elsewhere that he was 19 when he first got on that thoroughbred.
Another Pleasanton connection that did good besides Sea Biscuit. Also Casual Lies who trained there took second in the Kentucky Derby in the early nineties, and we had a filly that set a track record there that stood for 4 years. CL is now a leading NZ sire.
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