Miguel Mena’s foot never fully healed. Three years after he broke eight bones in his right ankle and heel in a fall at the Fair Grounds, the Peruvian jockey made his racetrack rounds mainly by bicycle because walking meant too much pain.
Which makes his death that much more mysterious. Fatally struck by a vehicle between the Blankenbaker Parkway and Hurstbourne Lane exits on westbound Interstate-64 in Louisville on Oct. 31, Mena had been headed in the direction of home when he suddenly left a Lyft ride and set out on foot.
“I don’t know how or why he got up there or what he was doing,” said Tim Hanisch, the jockey’s agent. “He didn’t like to walk much. It doesn’t make sense. Hopefully, the police can figure out a reason why.”
Hanisch said he had been with Mena earlier that evening and that they had a few beers. The extent of Mena’s drinking was later confirmed by the Jefferson County coronor’s office, which reported his blood alcohol content at .249 — more than three times Kentucky’s legal limit for operating motor vehicles: .08.
Jeffersontown Police Chief Rick Sanders said he suspected alcohol consumption had led Mena to make some “bad decisions,” and that the Lyft driver said he had debated with the jockey before letting him out near the intersection of Hurstbourne and Bunsen Parkway.
After reconstructing Mena’s moves through interviews with witnesses, Sanders said he believed the jockey walked up the ramp to eastbound I-64, successfully crossed the eastbound lanes of the highway and a concrete barrier, and was then struck in the right westbound lane. Accident reports identified the driver of the vehicle as former University of Louisville tennis coach Rex Ecarma, who passed a field sobriety test but declined to provide a statement to investigators.
In the opinion of state medical examiner Dr. Lauren Lippincott, Mena died of blunt force injuries.
He died six days shy of his 35th birthday and one week after he won the last of his 2,079 victories, aboard Delta Gamma Cats in a claiming race at Keeneland. Though he was not among the most in-demand riders of his generation, Mena’s mounts nonetheless earned more than $72 million and made him the 15th-winningest jockey in the history of Churchill Downs and a two-time winner of its Stephen Foster Stakes.
“The last couple years, he didn’t ride necessarily the best horses in the races, but he always gave them a really good chance,” fellow jockey Brian Hernandez said. “But when he did get the big opportunity, he always capitalized on it.”
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To Hernandez, Mena was like a “third brother,” a colleague and competitor he relied on for pre-race analysis and post-race companionship. The two men shared a corner of the jockeys room at Churchill Downs for more than a decade. When riding in New Orleans, away from their families in Kentucky, they dined together almost daily.
“He was always really intelligent on horses and knowing what horses were going to be in what races,” Hernandez said. “A really smart rider I guess is the best way to put it; just knowing what horse ran well the time before and knowing what horse he needed to beat.
“I could always ask him: ‘What about this horse or that horse?’ and he was always so insightful. He was one of those guys who just always pays attention to his job.”
Like the intrepid Cajuns Calvin Borel and Corey Lanerie, Mena developed a reputation for riding in fearless proximity to the inside rail to save ground. Trainer Chris Hartman credited this quality for Mena’s 2020 Kentucky Derby mount on ninth-place finisher Necker Island. Mena also rode Backtalk to a 20th-place finish in the 2010 Derby.
“I thought he was a great rider,” Lanerie said. “A lot of times he was in my way ‘cause he rode the rail just like me. Some guys won’t get that close. I don’t know what it is – they don’t want to get stuck down there or whatever. But myself and Miguel, we seem to love it and he was good at it.”
Mena’s toughness and resilience gained formal recognition in 2020 when he was named the first recipient of the Randy Romero Pure Courage Award, bestowed on an active jockey who had overcome adversity.
“He was always there on days when other riders wouldn’t be there,” Hartman said. “He came back from a real bad injury that most riders probably couldn’t come back from. I really didn’t think he’d make it back from that.”
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Mena was sidelined for more than seven months before he was able to return to racing, but he remained outwardly cheerful, customarily prefacing conversations with, “Hey, Cholo,” a Spanish term used interchangeably as endearment and derision.
“He never got back to normalcy (after the injury), but he never let that get him down,” Hernandez said. “He was the type of guy that when business was bad, he’d say, ‘Hey Cholo, I ain’t dead yet.’ Cholo, that was his nickname for everyone. Any time he won a big one he’d jump up and say, ‘Hey Cholo, I ain’t dead yet.’ ”
That he is dead now finds his friends searching for answers that elude them.
“It’s a nightmare you’d like to wake up from,” Hanisch said.
Tim Sullivan: 502-582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @TimSullivan714
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Jockey Miguel Mena’s death in Louisville befuddles friends