Page 44 - Speedhorse, October 2021

The Ultimate Honor
Jimmy Dean Brooks earns the coveted
Sam Thompson Memorial Jockey Award
by Diane Rice
Becoming a top jockey takes courage, spent lots of hours around the track. But as a
dedication, talent, and an epic work ethic. To also be voted by your rider peers as a jockey whose personal character reflects positively on your sport adds a high level of respect and admiration to that bullet list of requirements. This year, Quarter Horse jockeys chose Jimmy Dean Brooks of Blanchard, Oklahoma, as the jockey who checks off all the boxes on that list, naming him the 2021 Sam Thompson Memorial Jockey Award winner.
“The award means a great deal to me,” Jimmy Dean says. “Sam was a good friend, a great rider and an even better person. He was one of a kind.
“He was good to everybody,” Jimmy Dean adds. “He was just a good person. He was good for the business; he was an example for other jockeys.”
HIS BEGINNINGS
Jimmy Dean Brooks was born on July 18, 1965, in Blanchard, Oklahoma, which is still his hometown today.
As the son of the first Sam Thompson Award winner, Roy Brooks in 2011, Jimmy
youngster, he says, he never really wanted to
be a jockey. “I knew how to ride, and I started galloping when I was about 12 years old,” he says. “But I played baseball and football all through high school and every summer we’d go to Ruidoso, and I’d have to quit baseball.”
But in 1984 he made the decision to jump in. “I mainly rode in Oklahoma at Ada and I never went to Ruidoso until I started riding for Eddie Willis, except for riding Flys R Droppin for Donny Strickland in the All American Futurity in 1997.”
Like most jockeys, his goal was to win the All American Futurity. “My dad finished third in the All American and I thought, I could do that, too,” he says. He narrowly missed that goal with Flys R Droppin, placing second by a 1/2-length.
“My dad taught me most all of what I know,” he adds, “but I’ve also watched all the great riders — Jacky Martin, Jerry Nicodemus and all of them when I was a kid at Ruidoso. They’re ones I wanted to be like.”
Jimmy aboard Flys R Droppin as they win their 1997 Remington Park Futurity-G1 trial. Jimmy aboard Feature Hero after winning the 2013 All American Derby-G1.
42 SPEEDHORSE October 2021
Ruidoso Downs