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Prentice Fell in Love with Riding on STX, Found Success on the Mainland

St. Croix-born jockey Euclyn “Pede” Prentice Jr. (Photo by Ricky Plaskett)
St. Croix-born jockey Euclyn “Pede” Prentice Jr. (Photo by Ricky Plaskett)

St. Croix-born jockey Euclyn “Pede” Prentice Jr. has been plugging away at his craft on tracks all across the U.S., racking up win after win – and it hasn’t stopped yet.

Most recently, Prentice rode Sept. 8 in the $500,000 Kentucky Downs Turf Juvenile Sprint Stakes and Saturday in the $150,000 Grade III Iroquois Juvenile Stakes at the famous Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, as part of the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Win and You’re In Series.

Many young Virgin Islanders, especially on St. Croix, dream of becoming jockeys. Young men and women ride bareback in the streets of Frederiksted and the fields off Mahogany Road. At a job fair some time back at St. Croix Educational Complex, more than 80 students showed up to find out about jobs in the horse racing industry – more than any other occupation at the fair.

So what is it like to be a jockey, on a day to day basis?

This is the story of the day of Prentice’s 200th win, which he notched on July 7.

At 4:15 a.m. on an extremely humid Saturday morning, the honk of a horn can be heard outside Euclyn “Pede” Prentice Jr.’s Elsmere, Kentucky, apartment. It’s his agent Michael Secen, arriving to begin a fourth consecutive day of work accompanying Prentice to the thoroughbred equine training center in Louisville. Prentice is booked to exercise young two-year old colts and fillies as they prepare to make their racing debut in a few short weeks.

Not only is this an opportunity for Prentice, 28 years old and still young by industry standards, to get into the bigger barns with bigger opportunities. But it is an opportunity for Secen to work the backstretch of the famous Churchill Downs Race Course and book mounts for Prentice.

“Pede’s work ethic is contagious. Coming from a small island in the Caribbean typically doesn’t lend itself to the biggest opportunity because the jockey colony is so large here in North America, but I believed he was deserving of an opportunity to be successful,” Secen said, when asked what led him to represent the Virgin Islander.

Once they’ve both met their early morning obligations, they’re back in the car at 7 a.m. for the hour-and-a-half trip to Belterra Park Race and Entertainment Center outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. During the trip. Prentice checks messages, returns a few phone calls and texts to friends back in the territory and talks excitingly about the horses he just exercised. He goes on to talk about his young years in the territory riding at St. Croix’s Randall “Doc” James Racetrack, where he first visited with his father Euclyn Sr. and his uncle.

“I think I was four years old when they took me to the track and seven or eight when they put me on my first horse. The horse’s name was Flying Nun” he laughs. “I think I had to promise not to tell my mother.”

As they arrive in Ohio, he and his agent will both repeat what they did hours earlier for the trainers stabled at the Ohio racetrack. Around 11 a.m., Prentice hustles around checking on his mounts, planning for the five races in the hot summer sun scheduled later that day.

He and is agent visit a special two-year old colt named Mr. Chocolate Chip. A week earlier Prentice had ridden Mr. Chocolate Chip to a second place finish in the 117th Bashford Manor Stakes at Churchill Downs. Prentice was a long-shot that day , at odds of 103 to one. But three weeks earlier, he rode the same horse to a massive ten-length victory at Belterra Park, despite 30 to one odds.

That finish was Prentice’s first graded stakes finish in his three-year professional career. Mr. Chocolate Chip’s trainer, Cory Davidson, was impressed with Prentice Jr’s willingness to listen intently to instruction, but his work ethic for others trainers quickly earned him the opportunity to ride the trainer’s best horses on a weekly basis.

“I find that he gives 100 percent effort and can articulate what the horses are doing on the track and relay back to me the details as a trainer I need during the morning workouts. He has some of the best hands of any jockey I’ve met. His 110 percent effort behind the scenes preparing for his mounts is something that I am impressed with even more,” Davidson said.

As an already busy morning comes to an end and the race day is underway, Prentice climbs aboard his second mount of the day at Belterra Park: the tall, strong and stunning grey thoroughbred gelding Toll Guard. Prentice leads Toll Guard, the post-time wagering favorite, onto the track for a warmup before they head to the starting gate.

St. Croix-born jockey Euclyn “Pede” Prentice Jr. rides Toll Guard at Belterra July 7, recording his 200th victory. (Photo by Ricky Plaskett)
St. Croix-born jockey Euclyn “Pede” Prentice Jr. rides Toll Guard at Belterra July 7, recording his 200th victory. (Photo by Ricky Plaskett)

As the bell rings and the starting gates burst open and the horses thunder past the grandstands, Prentice focuses intently. Shortly, he and his mount take the lead as the eight horse field turns for the final run down the homestretch. Prentice goes on to guide Toll Guard to a win – his career milestone 200th professional victory. Cheers meet the call of the track announcer Ed Meyer and bettors wait anxiously to find out their payoffs.

This win is important not only to Prentice but also to Toll Guard’s trainer, Douglas Danner. A leading trainer and Kansas native with 37 years of experience, Danner has teamed up with Prentice on an amazing 23 percent win rate for 2018. The two have such a good relationship over Prentice’s career that the jockey’s 50th, 100th and now 200th career victories have all been celebrated together.

“I do know one thing for sure, that young man can ride anything. He’s a natural and I’ve been in this business for a lot longer than most,” said Danner, a third-generation horseman.

As the long day concludes with the sun setting over the racetrack and the reflection of the Ohio River in distance, only a hand full of patrons remained. Country music played softly as Prentice Jr. emerged from a small opening in the building’s jockey’s quarters area.

“V.I. Strong!” he exclaimed with his fist in the air as as he headed over to chat with a few Virgin Islanders who were on hand.

“V.I. Proud” one of them replied.

“I love this sport, I love what I do, love the thoroughbreds I ride,” Prentice said when asked what motivates him. “I am a proud Virgin Islander and ambassador of some sorts, you could say. I have great mentors in my fellow jockeys from the territory whom I admire and respect greatly. Yeah, I’m from a small group of islands in the Caribbean, but my dreams are big and I will continue to work hard and stay humble to achieve them.”

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