Page 106 - Speedhorse March 2019

Jose Vega
An Unforeseen Turn
by Jennifer K. Hancock
Racing is a humbling sport that’s capable of taking you to the highest highs and lowest lows within seconds. August 4 will for- ever be etched in the Vega family history as one of those roller coaster days of racing.
At Retama Park near San Antonio, Texas, on that fateful night, Jose Vega, a 34-year-old jockey originally from Mission, Texas, and Jess Cuz, an Appaloosa daughter of Freighttrain
B, entered the winner’s circle following a disqualification in the Colors of the Wind Paint & Appaloosa Stakes.
Two races later, in the Colors of the Wind Paint & Appaloosa Futurity, while piloting Royal Chachingalinga, Vega experienced a jockey’s nightmare, when the freshman gelding by Special Royal Corona clipped heels with third-place finisher Due Run Run, who bore out and was disqualified. Vega was slow to get up, and Royal Chachingalinga’s owner, Glen E. Wilkinson, who is a physician, insisted the jockey go to the hospital to be checked out.
At Northeast Methodist Hospital of San Antonio, the Vega family’s roller coaster ride continued.
Aubrey Vega, Jose’s wife, vividly remembers the chain of events.
“To be honest, he wasn’t going to go the hospital,” Aubrey said. “But he went because the owner of the horse that he fell from is a doctor and advised him to go. Jose was kind of complaining of back pain, and it took him a while to get up from the track. He said he was in so much pain, so they went ahead and took him to the hospital. He got checked out, and we were there for a good three or four hours while they did a CAT scan on him.”
The emergency room doctor returned with shocking news.
“The doctor came in, and he said, ‘I have some good news, and I have bad news. The good news is you did not sustain any injury from this fall. Nothing is broken and there’s no internal bleeding. The bad news is we found a tumor.’ He told us it was a cancerous tumor on the kidney.”
The unwelcomed news took a few minutes to absorb.
“We were just in a state of shock,” Aubrey said. “When you hear the word cancer, it’s shocking. Honestly, I felt like I got so weak in my knees. I’m not kidding, I felt like I was going to fall. I just started bawling, and I walked out of the room. I couldn’t handle it.”
102 SPEEDHORSE, March 2019