Thu, Jan 10, 2008 page19

• FEATURE: Racing helps jockey get life back on track

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  For the first time in a long time, Sylvia Harris has a roof over her head, money in her pocket and relative peace of mind. She has found this good place by riding horses.

  Harris is a rookie jockey at Hawthorne Race Course, a gritty track in an industrial area west of Chicago. She rides mainly long shots and has had only three winners, but being a jockey makes her feel happy and successful. She was not always happy.

  At 40, Harris is in her first full year of riding, making her one of the oldest apprentice jockeys around. She is also among only a handful of black jockeys of either gender riding today.

  

  Sylvia Harris, foreground, rides another winner at Hawthorne Race Course in Cicero, Illinois, on Jan. 2.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  Those are small parts of her story. The large parts -- the ones involving her health, her fractured relationships and her homelessness -- give her perspective.

  Harris had a relatively trouble-free life growing up in Santa Rosa, California. But all that changed when she was 19 and had her first bout of manic depression, which she said might have been triggered by the stress she endured when her parents divorced. It was the first of many episodes that would grow more intense.

  The condition became debilitating in 1995, when she was living in Virginia with her three young children and she was sent to a psychiatric facility for three months. As a result she lost custody of her children, who were six, five and two at the time.

  

  Sylvia Harris is pictured at Hawthorne Race Course in Cicero, Illinois, on Jan. 2. Harris is a rarity among jockeys as a black, female, 40-year-old rookie.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  "I'd stay up two, three days at a time and not sleep," she said. "When you don't sleep, your mind goes even more awry. I thought the world was coming to an end. I thought God was talking to me. I was hallucinating."

  With medication, she could better manage her illness, though her struggles continued. In 1999, she enrolled at an art, film and design school in Florida, hoping it would lead to a productive career.

  But at one point, she said, her car was stolen. Without transportation, she had to quit her job. Without her job, she could not pay her rent and was evicted. She said she ended up destitute on the streets of Orlando, sleeping in abandoned cars and eating at soup kitchens.

  Then Harris met a minister at a Florida homeless shelter who asked her about her interests. She blurted out an answer about working with horses. The minister arranged for her to be taken in by a ministry in Ocala, the heart of Florida's thoroughbred breeding industry where she landed a job working with the horses. It was, she realized later, her first step toward recovery.

  Harris was hired to gallop horses at the Sunrise Stable South, a training center in the Ocala area.

  After a few years Harris decided she was ready to become a jockey and in 2005, she saw a classified ad for a small track in Saskatchewan that needed jockeys.

  She answered the ad and headed for Marquis Downs in Saskatoon to become a jockey. Once there, she discovered that none of the paperwork that would allow a foreigner to work in Canada had been completed. It would cost her nearly US$3,000 to get everything in order -- - money she did not have.

  So she left, again aimless and without much hope.

  She wanted to return to Virginia to stay with her father, but she did not have enough gas money to get there. She did have enough to reach the Chicago area, home to the tracks at Arlington Park and Hawthorne. With her gas tank empty and a few dollars in her pocket, she arrived ready to take one last shot at becoming a jockey.

  Harris again concentrated on galloping horses in the mornings.

  In August, she rode in her first race at Arlington Park. Still, the mounts were hard to come by. She would go weeks without an assignment, and she became discouraged.

  In November, Harris finally received the kind of break that had so seldom come her way. For a race on Nov. 7 at Hawthorne, no one wanted to ride a horse named Wildwood Pegasus, who, some jockeys feared, was infirm. She seized the opportunity and persuaded the trainer Charlie Bettis to give her a chance.

  Harris finished third that day, and Bettis rewarded her by keeping her on the horse. With Harris aboard, Wildwood Pegasus won his next start, on Dec. 1. The victory opened some eyes, and Harris' business has increased.

  She is enjoying some success, and that means she has to be careful.

  "My problem is an everyday struggle," she said. "I have to watch myself. There have been times when I'm not sure I could have handled success. There's a fine line between being happy and being manic. I can't start thinking that I'm going to win the Kentucky Derby. There are times when I need a reality check."

  "I have had so many ups and downs," Harris said. "I've had so many relapses. Now I have steadiness and am in a good environment. People around the racetrack become your family, and they stick with you through thick and thin. I like it here, and I'm happy. The horses have changed my life."
• Most Popular

  • 1

    US to deliver 10 new F-16s, source says

  • 2

    Coco Gauff falls in Berlin after French Open victory

  • 3

    Victory pose

  • 4

    Costa Rica sent officials to train in Taipei, report says

  • 5

    Taipei begins park renovations amid resident protests