Sock Sock Exchange

Life The Good Good Good Good L

By TOM DIDATO

t’s gotta be the sock. It just has to be that single trusted foot covering with the holes which could be credited for the magic carpet ride on which Parker Hendriks found himself during his run to the 2022 National Steeplechase Association leading rider title.

IIt’s gotta be the sock. It just has to be that single trusted foot covering with the holes which could be credited for the magic carpet ride on which Parker Hendriks found himself during his run to the 2022 National Steeplechase Association leading rider title.

In the days leading up to his 19th birthday as well as his coronation as the king of riders for jump jockeys for the season past, Hendriks took a seat under a shedrow in the barn on the grounds of the Springdale Race Course once inhabited by trainer Jonathan Sheppard. The retired Hall of Fame trainer gave both Hendriks’ parents, Ricky Hendriks and Sanna Neilson, a leg up aboard many a Thoroughbred including --- in both instances --- several Grade I winners.

Sporting a smiling face which may have yet to had a razor run over it, Hendriks was reluctant to talk about questions posed to him which dealt with his chances of winning the leading rider championship even though, on this November morning and with four race meets remaining,

Winter 2023 - The Camden Horse & Equestrian-

Winter 2023 - The Camden Horse & Equestrian- hardly anyone would have bet against him winning it in his rookie campaign.

In a sport which usually spits riders out, leaving them bruised and battered from falls of every kind imaginable, Hendriks shows no outward signs of injury. His wide-eyed look and smile beneath it hardly seems that of someone who has been thrown off the back of a horse to the ground with a trip or two in the back of a first responder vehicle. Being aboard some of the country’s best jumpers while being trainer Keri Brion’s rider of first call on her standout string of horses has plenty to do with Hendriks’ health and well-being. If you ask him, though, there could be another reason unbeknownst to and unseen by the racing public.

Before donning his riding boots, Hendriks makes sure to slip into a comfortable and well-worn sock? Sound strange? Well, Linus Van Pelt of Peanuts fame had his trusted security blanket so why not one lucky stocking for Hendriks.

“I am superstitious. I have a lucky sock,” Hendriks of said of his one race day item of apparel. “It has a few big holes in it, but I’ve been riding every single race with that on. I’mi pretty OCD about my tack, too. I like it on a certain way and I like everything pretty clean and in good shape.”

Having started the 2022 campaign with a “bug” by his name, Hendrick said he worked hard to get the asterisk removed beside his name which lets people know that he is an apprentice jockey. His goal was to have ridden six winners in the spring which would take the bug designation out of the equation. Hendriks doubled that by winning a dozen races in the spring portion of the NSA schedule with the third of those coming with his victory aboard Historic Heart in the $50,000 Carolina Cup feature on April 2.

“I said that if I could lose my bug, which was to ride six winners in the spring, I’d be delighted,” he said of his modest goals last spring. “I doubled that with 12 winners in the spring which was incredible.”

When the jumper made their way to the race tracks in the summer, Hendriks picked up five more wins including four at Colonial Downs with another score at Saratoga. Suddenly, his chances to win the leading rider title began picking up steam. By the time the calendar turned to November, it was Hendriks who was the young man to catch. Nobody did.

Hendriks finished 2022 with 25 wins which were the most in a single NSA season since Gus Brown won the title with 30 victories from 101 mounts in 2001. Hendriks needed 96 rides to get his wins which amounted to making a turn into the winners’ enclosure better than 26 percent of the time he hopped in the saddle. His mounts finished in the money nearly 50 percent of the time as he boarded 15 secondand seven third-place finishers last year.

Hendriks, who had the title sewed up before the NSA season finale in Charleston, said he never allowed himself to think that he had the championship in the bag. The last thing he wanted to do was to change anything about what was shaping up to be a magical season.

“I thought about it, but I don’t change anything that I do or how I ride in terms of race riding, but it is definitely there. I just try and ride them all the same,” he said in the days leading up to the Charleston stop.

Hendriks ascent to the top started meagerly as a 15-year-old when he started working for Sheppard who was grooming Brion for a career as one of training’s rising stars. Hendriks won his first race on the Sheppard-trained Anticipating in a $30,000 handicap at Great Meadow (Va.) on Oct. 24, 2020. Two races later, on the same card, he made it a two-win day, piloting He’ll Do, trained by his mother, to a win in a $10,000 maiden claimer.

Hendriks has not looked back since that afternoon and when Sheppard retired, he cast his lot with Brion and her ever-growing barn. At the start, however, Brion had a just a handful of horses in her barn which has since grown and continues to get bigger with more owners coming on board from both sides of the Atlantic. “When Jonathan retired, Keri only had a handful of horses and I started working for her straightaway. It all worked together,” he said.

Brion, who some might call a maverick in jump racing as she has used social media as a means to promote her horses and the sport itself, showed no hesitancy to put an 18-yearold Hendriks on her best jumpers including Historic Heart who should make his way to racing in open company sooner rather than later.

Given Hendriks’ lineage, but more importantly his riding talent, Brion said she never hesitated in putting a teenager in the saddle for this race.

“To be honest, that was the least of my concerns,” she said after the Carolina Cup win last April. “Parker has worked very hard to get where he is and is wise beyond his years to be a jockey.

“He’s the best out there, in my opinion. I never thought anything different about it and (Historic Heart owner) Paul (Willis) has been great about giving Parker the opportunity, as well. He’s 18, but he’s earned this and he gave (Historic Heart) a peach of a ride.”

Given who his parents are and their respective riding careers, there was little question as to Parker Hendriks and his being placed on the back of a horse and learning to ride at an early age. When asked if he remembered the first time he was placed atop a horse, he smiled.

Winter 2023 - The Camden Horse & Equestrian

“The earliest memory I have of riding a horse was a little chestnut pony named Willy,” he said fondly. “My grandmother had a (horse) walker; it was fenced in and we would take the pony around the walker. That’s where I started riding; taking lessons around a walker with Willy.”

It seemed as if Hendriks might be a chip off the old block at an early age. He said he had no idea as to what his parents did in the steeplechase world. His father, Ricky, won back-to-back NSA leading rider titles in 1986 and 1987 and won 130 jump races before embarking on a training career. His mother, Sanna, was the first female rider to win the Colonial Cup; a feat which she accomplished with Mistico in 1992. Switching to a career as a trainer, she was the NSA’s leading conditioner in 2005 as she saddled 32 winners.

Those numbers and accomplishments were unknown to Parker Hendriks in his developmental years.

“I really had no idea until I was probably 13 or 14 about what they had done and until I was interested (in the sport.) It was never forced on me,” he said of his parents’ careers. “Maybe, if it was forced on me, I wouldn’t have liked it. It was always my choosing which may be why it’s all worked out.”

From here, you might think the story would go that Hendriks climbed the junior ranks, won every horse show in sight and had a path to the stars lined up.

Not so fast. Instead of taking all things equine stepby-step and year-by-year, Hendriks bided his time. The riding bug took a while to get into his system. When it did, however, there was no turning back.

“I got into pony racing pretty late, but as soon as I did it, I said that I wanted to do this again,” he said. “I had two winners in my first season when I was 16 (in 2020) and that kind of got me hooked. Then, last year, I really struggled for the first half of last year. To be honest, I wasn’t really riding great horses, but I wasn’t riding very well. The, last fall, I had four or five winners and I was like, ‘Man, I just love this.’”

After having his bug removed last spring, Hendriks made the decision to turn professional as he started picking up wins at a steady rate. In 2022, he rode four stakes winners including Iranistan, which captured the $75,000 Temple Gwathmey Hurdle Handicap (Gr. 2) in April. “It’s incredible stuff. We’ve won four stakes this year. It’s definitely been a little surreal,” he said with a slight shake of the head.

Given all his accomplishments, Hendriks was still the youngest rider in the jockeys’ room. He made light and alluded to the fact that some riders had their licenses longer than he had been alive. In spite of his age, he was fully accepted by the jump jockey community. He did things the right way and was respectful of his fellow riders.

“If you can ride, you can ride and I’ve been delivering. People respect you if you can deliver and win,” he said of the easiest way to gain the acceptance of one’s peers.

The jocks’ community is not the only group in which Hendriks had to gain faith and trust. There was also proving himself to Brion, who watches and works with Hendriks daily, and her owners. She sells her rider to them as he shows them that he is worthy of their trust in riding their jumpers.

“Keri is wonderful to ride for. I know there are different people to ride for, luckily, I ride for Keri and, basically, she’s it,” he said. “She used to be a jockey and she has been around jumpers for a long time.

“I always try to do what’s in the best interest of the horse and how we can win. Keri gets that and if I make an error, it is what it is and there’s no point to get upset about it. We just see what we did wrong, regroup and go forward. That’s wonderful.”

The owners also have come to know what they get from Hendriks and Brion as that pair continues to give them a smart return on their financial and physical investment.

“I like to have good owners like Kier does who you know are going to stand by you and back you. That lets you ride with a lot of confidence when you can just ride off of instinct with what the horse is doing rather than being tied down with instructions from an owner or trainer,” Hendriks said.

A recent high school graduate who said he would think about heading to study in college if a particular school and subject appealed to him, Parker Hendriks has put those plans on the back burner. At the same time, in a profession which your career can change in a split second, you have to cast an eye to the future. For Hendriks, he said he will not follow in his parents’ footsteps after his days and the saddle come to an end.

“I’d like to keep riding,” he said of his future plans. “For the long, long term … I honestly have no interest in training. I may have a horse or two, just for fun or whatever. To be honest, I would have no interest in training and having someone else riding them for me.

“I’m very OCD and kind of a control freak. I like to be in control of everything so, I probably wouldn’t want someone else ride a horse that I was training.”

So far, at this early stage of his career, that way of thinking and that philosophy has served Parker Hendriks well. If you don’t believe it, there is a championship trophy somewhere in his house which serves as proof.