Roger Blanco: How He used Three Decades in a Wheelchair to Help Others

By Eddie Donnally 

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Roger Blanco, in a wheelchair for 28 years, battles ongoing health issues common to paraplegics but still reaches out to offer encouragement and practical advice to fellow former jockeys who had similar injuries. He also credits the monthly stipend he receives from the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund with putting his income in the range required by a mortgage company to refinance his home.  “If it wasn’t for that income I would have lost my home,” he said. “I’ve lived here a long time and that would have been hard to deal with.”

 

Injured in a spill in 1988 at Monmouth Park, the Cuban native lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  Saying he “loves to make my own money,” he worked as a jockey agent until he dislocated a hip in a fall in the shower.  After being divorced from Michele Blanco, the former marketing director at Calder, his son, 10 at the time of the accident, wanted to live with his dad, though his mother lives nearby and has always been a huge part of his life. Roger said his father helped and Christopher, 23, is now a student at the University of Florida.

 

Blanco swims each day to keep his upper body strong, but said his back has two herniated discs and his insurance will not pay to remove the rod that was inserted in his spine shortly after his injury, something his surgeons say is needed first. He said the pain is constant and takes painkilling medication each day.

 

Still, he has reached out to several paraplegic former jockeys whose injuries were recent. He even fixed the wheelchair for one who lives locally. Having gone through it, he knows adjustment to becoming a para- or quadriplegic is never easy. “One day you’re in front of 20,000 people in the grandstand and the next day you’re alone.

 

Thinking back, I realize God did not kill me the day of the accident, so there is a reason I’m alive. Maybe, I’m a prototype to see how much a person can take and still love God. Ethel Kennedy said, ‘God never gives you more than you can take.’ I never look at it like it was God’s punishment. It’s just a test and we’re all tested. Jockeys know what comes from the sport: you can be rich and famous or you can be dead.  I’ve learned to not ask God ‘why me’ but ask God, ‘why not me?’”