Junior Alvarado’s magical ‘Year of Firsts’

 Junior Alvarado’s “Year of Firsts” almost didn’t get off the ground – because he was lying on it.

It was the last race at Gulfstream Park on March 23, less than one week before Alvarado would ride Sovereignty in the Grade 1 Florida Derby in the Godolphin colt’s final prep for the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby.

He was on a 4-year-old maiden making his fifth start and first on the turf for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott and owners Claiborne Farm and Adele B. Dilschneider. Alvarado felt his horse moving “a little weird” heading into the first turn of the 7 1/2-furlong race, and the situation quickly got worse.

“I could see both of his legs going all over the place, so I tried to pull him up, but his body was going into the rail,” said Alvarado, who thought – incorrectly – that he was at the back of the field.

“All of a sudden I felt a horse kind of roll me over right after I went down,” he said. “I felt a lot of pain all over my body. I couldn’t move my right arm at all. Zero movement.”

After returning to the jockeys’ room and unable to remove his silks, Alvarado was taken to the hospital, where a doctor gave him a diagnosis he did not want to hear: broken scapula.

Alvarado asked if he would be able to ride in the Florida Derby – in six days. The doctor told him he would be out at least six weeks, which would almost certainly sideline him for the Kentucky Derby. This could not be happening. Here he was, with a horse whom he felt had a very good chance to give him his first Kentucky Derby, a horse he told Mott was the best 2-year-old he had ever ridden for him, and now that dream was dead.

Or was it?

Alvarado called Dr. Rick Alfred, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine injuries and serves as the trauma physician for Saratoga Race Course, and who happened to be in Florida at the time. Alfred painted a more optimistic, if painful, picture.

As opposed to keeping the arm in a sling, Alfred told Alvarado to move it as often as possible, as much as he could withstand the pain.

After about a week, Alvarado started noticing significant improvement each day. On April 10, he called his agent, Mike Sellitto, and told him he was going to start exercising horses at Belmont the following day. On April 16 – only 24 days after the spill – he rode two races at Keeneland. The Derby dream was back on. While Alvarado had the physical strength to complete the rapid rehab, Mott gets an assist with the mental side of it.

“Bill called me the next day [after the injury] and said, ‘Listen, you have [Sovereignty] back before the Derby, after the Derby, whenever you’re back, you’ll get that horse and any other horse you’ve been riding. Do whatever you need to do.’ That gave me a peace of mind that I needed. I just had one mission at that point,” Alvarado said.

That mission was accomplished on May 3 at Churchill Downs when Alvarado guided Sovereignty to a thrilling come-from-behind victory over Journalism and 17 other horses in the 151st Kentucky Derby, validating the confidence he had in the son of Into Mischief since his juvenile campaign and giving the Venezuelan native his first Derby win in his 19th year riding in the United States.

“I knew I had the horse for the Derby,” said Alvarado, who won the Mike Venezia Award in 2023 and the George Woolf Award last year. “I’ve never been so confident going into the Derby. There was no pressure. We weren’t the favorite [Journalism went off at 3-1, Sovereignty 7-1]. The race developed the way we wanted it. I think it was just meant to be.”

Alvarado can be considered an authority on karma, having been along for the ride in the magical journey of Cody’s Wish and Cody Dorman. He was discouraged with his career in 2022, when he got the mount back on Cody’s Wish in the Grade 3 Westchester. Since then, he won his first Breeders’ Cup race [Cody’s Wish, Dirt Mile, 2022], the $20 million Saudi Cup in 2024 [Senor Buscador], Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes and Arlington Million [Fort Washington].

Through August 10, Alvarado had won 17 Grade 1 races since 2022, after capturing 13 from 2010-21. He had won 2,267 races in North America with purse earnings of almost $156 million.

He said he does not regret Sovereignty’s connections passing on the Preakness and a chance at a Triple Crown, especially after the horse came back to win the Belmont Stakes and Grade 2 Jim Dandy presented by Mohegan Sun, setting him up as the prohibitive favorite in the 156th DraftKings Travers.

“I know everybody’s dream is to win a Triple Crown, and that’s mine too,” Alvarado said. “But I think it was so great winning the Derby that I didn’t really care much that we weren’t running in the Preakness. I was just excited that we accomplished something that we’ve been working towards for so many years, especially for Bill Mott and Godolphin. I feel fulfilled winning the Derby.”

That’s what Alvarado’s father, Rafael, had in mind when he told his son if he wanted to make it big as a jockey he would have to leave Venezuela and come to the U.S. to compete against the best. Alvarado arrived in South Florida in 2007 and the next year moved his tack to Arlington Park, where he won his first Grade 1 race in 2010, the Beverly D. aboard Eclair de Lune.

He met his wife, Kelly, while he was at Arlington and late in 2010 he took on the challenge of riding on the NYRA circuit. Fifteen years later, he is a staple in the best jockey colony in the world. And now he hopes to add a Travers win to his growing list of firsts.

“This is the biggest race of the summer here, the Travers,” said Alvarado, whose permanent residence is near Belmont Park with Kelly and their three children, Adrian, 14, Adalyn, 10, and Axel, 6. “I think after we won the Derby, we figured it would be nice to win the Belmont, but we were already kind of shooting for the Travers. That was our main goal for the summer. It’s the race that everybody wants to win here. And I think we have the horse.”

There will be plenty of people heading to the mutuel windows Saturday who agree.

*

Paul Halloran writes for the Saratoga Special and Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred Magazine. His book – “Cody’s Wish: A Boy, a Racehorse, and a Fight for Life”— will be published by Lyons Press next spring.