page_title: Gary Stevens (jockey)
section_title: Injuries
hierarchical_section_title: Gary Stevens (jockey) / Career / Injuries
caption_attribution_description: English: Beholder closes ground relentlessly on Songbird in the Breeders' Cup Distaff
context_page_description: Gary Lynn Stevens is an American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey, actor, and sports analyst. He became a professional jockey in 1979 and rode his first of three Kentucky Derby winners in 1988. He had nine wins in Triple Crown races, winning the Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes three times each, as well as ten Breeders' Cup races. He was also a nine-time winner of the Santa Anita Derby. He entered the United States Racing Hall of Fame in 1997. Combining his U.S. and international wins, Stevens had over 5,000 race wins by 2005, and reached his 5,000th North American win on February 15, 2015.
  His career successes were intertwined with significant injuries and periods of temporary retirement, mostly due to knee problems, from 1999 until 2000 and again from 2005 to 2013. He had an acting role in the 2003 film Seabiscuit. After his second retirement from riding in 2005, he worked for TVG and then HRTV and NBC Sports as a horse racing analyst for seven years, had a brief stint as a race horse trainer, and took a few other acting roles, notably in the TV series Luck, before coming out of retirement again in 2013.
context_section_description: Stevens' career as a jockey has been punctuated by a number of significant injuries. His first major accident was a starting gate training incident in 1985 when a horse threw him into the rail, putting him into a coma for 16 hours and causing serious injuries to his shoulder and right knee. In 2003, he suffered major injuries in the Arlington Million when his horse, in first place, spooked at the finish line, throwing him in front of the rest of the field, where one horse stepped on him, resulting in a collapsed lung and neck injuries. He returned to racing 19 days later. Over the years, he had gone through approximately a dozen medical procedures on his right knee and three on his left, mostly arthroscopic surgeries. In addition to his knee problems, he also had assorted surgeries on his right wrist and both shoulders.
  By 2014, his right knee required a total knee replacement. Medical testing revealed he also had been riding with a completely torn ACL. Following surgery, Stevens stated that he developed an addiction to the prescription painkillers he was given, so he isolated himself for a week and went off the medication cold turkey, after which he felt that he finally began to fully recover from the surgery. Three months after the operation, he returned to racing, working horses in the morning, and accepted mounts for the 2014 Breeders' Cup. On November 22, he won his first race following his surgery, an allowance optional claiming race at Del Mar racetrack. He returned to graded stakes-winning form with a Grade II win in the Grade II Arcadia Handicap on January 31, 2015:53 and achieved his 5,000th North American win on February 13, 2015.
  In late December 2016, Stevens had hip replacement surgery on his left hip.  He anticipated a recovery time of about 12 weeks, after which he declared that he intended to return to racing, but indicated that 2017 might be his last year of racing, with the caveat, "unless I come up with a really good 2-year-old who looks like he'll be a major contender for the 2018 Kentucky Derby." He returned to race riding on March 10, and rode a winning horse on March 11, 2017. Due to his multiple joint replacements, "The Bionic Man" became one of his nicknames.
caption: Stevens on Beholder in 2016, two years after his knee replacement surgery
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