Garrett K. Gomez

Garrett Keith Gomez was an American Thoroughbred jockey, born on 1 January 1972, who won two Eclipse Awards and thirteen Breeders' Cup races during his career. He learned to ride by watching his father Louie, who rode at tracks across the Southwest, left school in the tenth grade and began riding at Santa Fe Downs in September 1988. After winning back-to-back Arkansas Derbies in 1994 and 1995 he moved to California, won the 1998 Hollywood Park fall meet title and took four Grade I races there in 1999. Following substance abuse problems and jail time in 2003 he returned in 2004 and won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and Mile in 2005. In 2007 he set a record of 76 stakes wins in a season, and in 2010 he won the Breeders' Cup Classic on Blame, handing Zenyatta her only defeat. He died on 14 December 2016.