There have been nearly three dozen jockeys win titles at race meetings of significant length during this season of pandemic interruption and unrest. Some of them everyone knows—Flavien Prat, Ricardo Santana Jr., Manny Franco, Trevor McCarthy, the Ortiz brothers—while others are content to be local heroes with loyal and well-rewarded followings.
Carol Cedeno won her sixth Delaware Park title in the past seven years, equaling McCarthy's daunting number. Luis Perez topped the 2020 standings at a Finger Lakes meet delayed but not derailed by coronavirus. Perennial champ Victor Santiago led a Fairmount Park meet that lost more than two months in the calendar. Prairie Meadows was on hold for six weeks before it could open in June, but that did not stop veteran Alex Birzer from winning his sixth riding crown. And while Fonner Park was carrying a lot of the pari-mutuel load during the darkest days of last spring, that was Armando Martinez with 70 winners to lead the way.
Indiana Grand, just down I-74 from Indianapolis in the town of Shelbyville, was scheduled to open in mid-April for 120 racing days but had to wait until management got the all-clear from local health authorities. The meet finally commenced June 15, and by the time the track's 86 days of racing concluded Nov. 19, the rider standing tall atop the standings was DeShawn Parker, all 49 years and 5-foot-10 of him.
Parker has been a known quantity since the early 2000s when he started winning a series of titles at Mountaineer Casino Racetrack & Resort in West Virginia, just across the Ohio River from his home in East Liverpool, Ohio. He always stood out in a crowd, but as part of a profession obsessed with size, he gets more flak about his height than the color of his skin.
"I definitely always hear how tall I am and everything about that," Parker said. "I just love it. I let them say something, then I go out there and win a race to show how it can be done."
For many, the 2020 season has been much worse than for others. Parker counts himself among the fortunate in Thoroughbred racing whose livelihood has not been unduly impacted by the spread of COVID-19 and the restrictions of necessary precautions. He has responded by keeping himself healthy through the old-fashioned practice of common sense.
"I've been sticking to the guidelines," Parker said. "Washing my hands a lot more than I ever have, using hand sanitizer, wearing a face mask. As of right now that's what we've all got to be doing, because with the virus spiking again, it looks like we're going to be back in the same situation we were in earlier this year."
As he spoke, Parker was packing his Indiana Grand gear to go home to East Liverpool (pop. 10,713) for a few days before descending on Turfway Park for its Dec. 2 opening, pandemic permitting. With 160 wins this year, riding at a 20% strike rate, Parker is not in the hunt for a national title, but he is bearing down on the giddy 6,000 career win mark. Win No. 5,822 came on Indiana Grand's final program.
Parker comes by his racing through his father, Daryl Parker, who has enjoyed a long career as a racing official on the Ohio circuit. This year, the elder Parker was diagnosed with a malignant tumor on his spine, which put a grim twist on a year already headed down the drain.
"There was a delay in getting treatment because of the virus, but they were able to do everything they needed, and right now he's cancer-free," Parker said. "He's back to work at Mahoning Valley."
After 33 years in the saddle, Parker has had more than his share of physical trauma, including an unlucky 2018 during which he fractured a collarbone and suffered a punctured lung in separate incidents. His most consequential injury occurred in early 2010 when he suffered a badly bruised hip just as he was about to answer the nagging question: When is DeShawn Parker going to take a shot at the big time?
"That was right after the year I finished second in the nation," Parker said. "I was at Penn National and went down the very day before I was going to New York to ride at Aqueduct Racetrack. I missed that whole winter."
Let the record show that after giving his colleagues a two-month head start, Parker won 377 races in 2010 to edge Hall of Famer Russell Baze and future Hall of Famer Ramon Dominguez for the national title. He also became the first African-American to win national honors since James Perkins in 1895. In 2011, Parker won 400 races to win another title, and in so doing he joined the dozen riders who have won back-to-back titles in the past 100 years. Of those, 11 are in the Hall of Fame and the other, Irad Ortiz Jr., is well on the way. Parker was asked to describe the trophy case souvenir he received for such a significant accomplishment.
"Nothing," Parker replied. "Not a thing. But I did get a trophy from Indiana Grand yesterday, and that means a lot. It's been a rough year, for everybody."
