Touched by an Angel : After Sudden Death of His Longtime Friend, Stevens Gets a Special Victory

The obituary took up only a few paragraphs in the Kentucky papers last week.

Mark Kaufman, 47, the former publicity director at the Longacres track near Seattle, had died. Kaufman suffered a heart attack while driving back to his hotel from a Kentucky Derby trainers’ dinner. His out-of-control rental car crashed into a fire hydrant. He died six minutes after he was brought to the hospital.

As far as Gary Stevens was concerned, Kaufman was front-page news. They had become good friends at Longacres, where Stevens was a riding champion before he became a star at the Southern California tracks in the 1980s. The jolly Kaufman could do anything around a track. Early on, he was even the track announcer at Longacres. At Churchill Downs, he part of the Derby-week staff.

Stevens, 32, reflected on this over a beer or two on Wednesday, the day after Kaufman died. The jockey had just flown in to Louisville from Los Angeles, where he spent a day after arriving in the United States from Hong Kong. Stevens had a 4 1/2-month Hong Kong contract that was to run until June, but he was able to end the agreement early.

On Saturday, not long after he had won the Kentucky Derby with Thunder Gulch, Stevens was talking about Mark Kaufman again. When asked to compare this victory with his Derby victory aboard Winning Colors in 1988, Stevens said:

“The last time was sweet, but there were some things surrounding this one that might have made this one more sweet. It’s been a hard week for me with my friend Mark passing away. I felt like I had an angel walking out to the paddock with me. He made my legs a little lighter, and he helped me get around the track.

“I sent a message to his wife. It was Derby eve, and I told her that I was going to have a special passenger with me today, and I expected to give him the most thrilling ride of his short life. So maybe he got it today.”

Stevens’ Hong Kong contract included a few trips back to the United States to ride in important races, and he made the most of the long-distance fly-ins. He won the Santa Anita Handicap with Urgent Request, and he won the Santa Anita Derby with Larry The Legend, the colt he would have ridden in the Kentucky Derby if he hadn’t been injured.

The morning of the Santa Anita Derby, Stevens and trainer Wayne Lukas talked about the possibility of Stevens riding at Churchill Downs. Pat Day was riding Timber Country and Mike Smith was aboard Thunder Gulch, but Lukas said that he thought he was going to lose Smith to another Derby prospect, Talkin Man.

Stevens had ridden Thunder Gulch once before, winning the Remsen at Aqueduct in November. The colt was seventh at the start of that race.

“He showed more speed this time,” Stevens said. “Fifty yards out of the gate, I couldn’t have been in a better position.”

Stevens’ Hong Kong commitment has ended, and he is back in California to stay.

“They only race a couple of days a week over there,” Stevens said, “and I had been riding over here for 16 years without a break. So the first month over there, I freshened myself. But the last month and a half, all I thought about was the Kentucky Derby. I got homesick.”

On one of his trips back to Hong Kong, Stevens was met by his agent, Ron Anderson, who gave him the news that Larry The Legend had been injured. That sent Stevens to Thunder Gulch.