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Vincent Amico: The Zest Lives On

By Eddie Donnally

 

In a recent call to former jockey Vincent Amico for an interview, he was in obvious pain. Seems the paraplegic was mowing his considerable lawn with a riding mower using a stick to press the accelerator when he hit a bump hurling him into the machine’s front and badly bruising several ribs.“I thought I was having a heart attack it was so bad,” he said.

Such is the fast talking native of Sicily. He has been in a wheelchair since his racing accident 38 year ago. But he still repairs the aging pick-up truck he drives and he shops and cooks. His injury has not stopped him from wheelchair racing, playing basketball and Scuba Diving.

 “I do everything,” he said. “My wife Lori helps, but I’m very independent. Attitude is very important. I don’t dwell on the past. I’m a happy person. I’m not a sad person.”

With an uncle as a sponsor he landed in Boston at 16 in 1971. While attending East Boston High School a teacher noted his size, and he and friends “hooked” school one day and drove to nearby Suffolk Downs. He spoke with several “clockers” who put him in touch with a jockey agent who helped land him a job with trainer John Rigatteri. While it usually requires two to four years of exercising racehorses before riding in a race, Amico said he rode his first race seven months later.

“The stewards and some jockeys watched me work a horse out of the gate and okayed me,” he said. “In my first race I thought I was at the finish line when I was really at the quarter pole. But I won in a dead heat on my second mount and won again on my third.”

He remembers being the leading apprentice during the fall meet in 1974. Equibase stats has him riding 1,742 races from 1976-78, winning 230. “They don’t even have me riding in 1974 or 75,” he said. “I have a Jockeys’ Guild article that shows I won 425.”

Regardless, by the time he was severely injured on July 30, 1978 at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire, he was having a solid if not spectacular career. A month after turning 23 and four years into a riding career, it suddenly ended. He had earned a five-day suspension and could have started it that day. But he rode. One mount was a last minute pick up, oddly named Sherri’s Lucky Lady. The horse clipped a rival’s heels and fell. “I remember my legs were burning like they were on fire; like somebody was cooking them. I passed out and woke up in the (Boston University) Hospital.

A model patient, he spent four months in rehab. He was soon playing basketball and racing his chair in Boston, New York and Rhode Island. He was also encouraging other new paraplegics. In counseling one day, a psychiatrist asked him how it felt to be in a wheelchair.” I told him he’d never been in one and could never really understand. He asked me if I ever considered going to college to become a counselor.”

Amico never took him up on the offer, but he did spend several months volunteering for the college and traveling to other colleges and high schools to speak about spinal cord injuries. Since then, he has counseled and encouraged several other severely injured jockeys.

He worked as a jockeys’ agent and less than three years after his injury turned to training. According to Equibase, he started 1,070 horses and won 125 races. “I did everything,” he said. “I put on bandages and even walked some of my horses from the wheelchair. I loved it.”

Following his wife’s lead, he learned to Scuba Dive and earned a certification. They completed several dives at Florida Crystal River and Key Largo, completing over a dozen dives. “My wife would be above me, kicking and I would use my arms,” he said. “We once went down 98 feet. It was awesome.”

By 2005, thoroughbred racing was winding down at Rockingham Park and Suffolk Downs. He and his wife of 34 years sold their home in Florida and moved to Vinton LA near Delta Downs. But Hurricane Rita destroyed their new home and training barn, causing them to live in a motel room for seven months.

Soon he was down to training a few horses. Today, all that’s left of his training career are two foals. Paraplegics have life span years below normal and he is 60. “Five years ago I could climb a mountain,” he said. “But things are tougher, and now I make it day to day, but I still go to move and keep going.”

He said he uses the monthly payments from Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund to pay bills. “I’d be broke by the middle of the month if it wasn’t for them.”

In early December, doctors found a tumor on his liver. With doctors deciding not to yet operate, he was scheduled for another PET (Position Emission Tomography) Scan on May 27 to learn if it had grown. This is a week before he and Lori are scheduled to be at Jockeys and Jeans at Parx Racing on June 3, where Amico will become one of six catastrophically injured jockeys honored. Never one to avoid a risk, he insists on going. “My wife said go and have a good time with your friends. I don’t want to find out until I get back.”

He will turn 61 on June 2, the day before the event. That evening he will celebrate his birthday with other injured riders and a hoard of former and current jockeys. “It (the tumor) is scary and I don’t want to think about it now,” he said. “I’m not going to let it screw up my plans.”