Solis’ mind is back in the saddle

The demons, Alex Solis said, would always come at night, when the house was quiet and he was alone with his thoughts.

“There were so many times that I got up in the middle of the night and I was crying,” he said. “I knew my mind was playing games with me and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

Arguably the best jockey in the country until a horrifying spill fractured his back and shattered his confidence nearly five years ago, Solis saw his career slipping away. On some days after his injury, he was as good as any rider at the track. But on too many others he could be timid, making him little more than a passenger on the back of his horse.

Seven months ago he found it in the tough love of a friend, who helped him rebuild his career with little more than tape and a rubber band. As a result, he’ll be riding the favorite in today’s 72nd Santa Anita Derby aboard The Pamplemousse, the horse he hopes to ride in next month’s Kentucky Derby.

Between the two races, he could be inducted into horse racing’s Hall of Fame on April 20.

But before Solis could dream of such heights, he had to deal with some lows.

It was on a summer day in 2004 at Del Mar that Solis and his mount, a 4-year-old dark brown mare named Golden K K, were well back in a $32,000 claiming race when they were crowded against the rail by Vegas Foil, who had an apprentice jockey on top. The horses clipped heels, sending Golden K K and her rider sprawling to the track.

The horse was unhurt, but Solis had a fractured vertebra, a punctured lung and three broken ribs, injuries that would require nine months and a risky surgery to heal. His psyche, however, had sustained far worse damage.

“After I came back … for whatever reason my mind started playing games on me,” said the Panamanian-born jockey, who estimates he had broken nearly two dozen bones in other racing accidents before his spill at Del Mar. “There were some times where, in my mind, I froze. Or I was more cautious. It hurt me because I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

What hurt even more, though, was seeing the trainers and owners who had once lined up for Solis’ services quickly turn their backs.

Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron, however, refused to turn his back or look the other way. Instead, he stared straight into Solis’ eyes and challenged him.

“It was like, ‘Do you want to be in the Hall of Fame or not?’ ” McCarron remembers of their conversation last summer.

Solis’ salvation, he decided, was in the words of empowerment gurus such as Anthony Robbins and Jack Canfield who teach, in part, that fear of failure is often the biggest impediment to success.

“I started putting all these tapes in my iPod and I started listening,” Solis said of the motivational recordings. “I had to overcome all this horrible fear.’

To remind himself, Solis wears a simple rubber band on his left wrist. Whenever his thoughts turn negative, he gives the band a snap.

“For anybody that has gone through this kind of pain, suffering, you have to be clear what life means to you,” Solis says. “And what my life means to me is, I know I could be hurt, whatever. But what’s my destiny? God gave me this talent for racing and I have to fulfill my life. It’s so clear.”