Page 8 - May 2009 The Game

8 The Game, May 2009
Outside the Jocks’ Room...With Steven Bahen
By Michelle Rainford
The beginning of the 2009 meet is well underway, but long before the gates opened for the rst race, the Woodbine backstretch opened for training. Trainers, grooms, hotwalkers and exerciser riders slowly return to prepare for the upcoming racing season. Every year one of the rst jockeys out galloping in the cold is Steven Bahen, fondly known as Stevie to everyone who knows him personally. Every morning Stevie can be found out on the track, galloping and working horses, helping out different trainers and it was after one such morning that he and I met in the jocks’ room to have a talk.
Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
Of course no fear, I think to myself, it goes with being a jockey.
I nd it quite interesting how jockeys come to choose their career, as it is not a typical job. I asked Stevie how his road led him to the jocks’ room.
“One of my dad’s friends was an old time jockey in the forties,” he tells me. “Hank Williams was his name. I used to say ‘I’m gonna be a jockey one day’ not really thinking I ever would be. After my father passed away I saw Hank at the track and he hooked me up with a job. I was fourteen. They got me mucking stalls, tacking horses, putting on bandages. I’d never done any of those things before. At the
end of my rst day my boss tells me that I should probably nish school. So that was it, I worked one day. A couple of weeks later I saw Hank again and he asks how the job’s going. I told him I wasn’t working there, that I only worked one day. So Hank set me up with another job. I worked at the track and got credit towards my school for it. I learned how
to ride by getting on the pony and after about three years I started galloping horses. I learned a little at a time and when I was twenty I rode my rst race.”
As one of the tracks hardest working jockeys, Stevie’s attitude towards his job and his personal life are one to be admired. “I am who I am and I don’t care what people think about me. The people who know me know who I really am. No one has any reason to think badly about me. If I’ve done something wrong, tell me and we’ll work it out.” As for personal goals Stevie has set for himself, “I have to win the Prince of Wales. Then I’ll have my own
Triple Crown.
Not on the same horse, but that’s my goal. I ride to win. I give one hundred and fty percent every time I go out there.” With an attitude like that I have no doubt Stevie will reach his goal. His work ethic
is one that future jockeys can aspire to current jockeys can relate to.
Born June 29, 1966 in Montreal, Stevie was taken
Stevie is married and has two teenagers. He tells me about how he met his wife, Lorrie, “A friend brought her around. But I knew of her, growing up in Malton. We started dating two days before my seventeenth birthday. We got married when I was twenty one and we’ve been married for twenty two years now.” When I asked Stevie what his greatest accomplishment is he was quick to answer, “My family, and my marriage. It’s forever and it’s right.
I love what I have and I’m happy with what I have, and the kids are happy. There’s always going to be tough times but you get through them. You just can’t get down.”
in as a foster child by his parents when he was
six days old. “I’m adopted,” Stevie tells me, “my
parents had fostered me for six months when they
Stevie’s two kids are his son Ronnie, nineteen,
and his daughter Jordan, fteen. This past winter Stevie decided to try snowboarding with Ronnie.
His account of his rst attempt down the slopes was quite comical. “When I was a kid I skateboarded and galloping horses you have to have good balance so I thought I’d be okay at it, I should be able to do it. We were going up in the chairlift and Ronnie asks if I want to get off at the middle and I just said ‘no, let’s go to the top,’” he pauses, “No Brains... So
came to take me away. My mother just told them
she wanted me, and my parents had to go ght for
me. My dad said, ‘we already have three,’” Stevie
says jokingly referring to his older sisters, but the
adoption went through and all these years later he
tells me of their relationship now. “We’re a really
close family, my mother lives with my family now,
and my sisters live in the same neighbourhood as us
in Brampton. I’m very family oriented.” I asked
Stevie when his family moved from Montreal,
we get off at the top, get going and WHAM, I fall.
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“My father worked for the RCMP. They took over running the racetrack so his job took him here. As
It hurts the wrists more than anything. But after a few hours I got the hang of it. We went a couple
long as I can remember we were here, in Malton, I was three or four probably when we moved. But I bought my rst house in Brampton.”
more times and I ended up going down the black diamond runs. No fear.”
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