The memories are clear, unvarnished over more than three decades and thousands of victories.
Each time Kent Desormeaux returns to Maryland, as he will this week for the 141st Preakness Stakes on Saturday at Pimlico Race Course, there's a good chance someone will remind him about something he did in his early years as a teenage phenom tearing up the sport.
Desormeaux was to horse racing in the late 1980s what Tiger Woods became to golf. He was a 16-year-old apprentice in December of 1986 when he won his first stakes race, the Maryland City Handicap at Laurel, on a horse named Godbey.
"I had been winning several races on the undercard, not getting an opportunity in a stakes [race] because I was an apprentice — a bug boy — but the chatter after that race was, 'Did you see that ride?'" Desormeaux, 46, recalled. "That was the beginning of the next level of racing for me."
His first stakes victory was merely a prelude to what Desormeaux did the next three years, when he won more races than any rider in the country, including 598 in 1989 — a record that still stands. He was named the Eclipse Award winner as Apprentice Jockey of the Year and earned a second Eclipse Award in 1989.
Dale Capuano, who first started giving Desormeaux work at Laurel as a "10-pound bug," said "even when he was young, he could ride any type of horse. Front runner, closer, stalker, it didn't matter."
Early on, Desormeaux rode for Capuano, Charlie Hadry and Marvin Moncrief, who gave him his first stakes ride on Godbey. Longtime Maryland-based trainer Mike Trombetta said he occasionally got his chance to use the sport's rising star, and would have liked to use him more.
"It was to your benefit to get him on your horse because it would put you in a stronger position and even more so, you didn't want him riding against you if you had a live horse," Trombetta said. "He could make a big difference."
Desormeaux admits he didn't quite grasp the significance of his early accomplishments. In 1989, when he broke the record for wins, it was all a blur.
"I remember nothing but planes, trains and automobiles," he said. "I was riding from 1 to 6 [p.m. in Maryland], and then either jumping on a plane or getting in a car and going to the next track – Penn National, Philadelphia Park, Garden State or the Meadowlands. I did that for at least three months of that year. That was my last year there (in Maryland)."
After considering riding in New York, Desormeaux went to California when Marjorie Everett, the owner of Hollywood Park, held a day in his honor for winning the 1989 Eclipse Award.
"My [first] wife and I enjoyed a stay at her mansion, where we were treated like royalty," he said. "We were newlyweds and we decided the New York way of life was probably going to be difficult on children, so we moved to California, where the sun shines all the time."
Still, Maryland holds a special place – and pull - for Desormeaux. He knows the roads, knows the track and feels calm racing there.
Asked the biggest difference between being a 46-year-old jockey coming back to ride in the Preakness for the 14th time — it will be his 42nd Triple Crown race — and the 16-year-old apprentice from Louisiana looking to make a name for himself, Desormeaux said it's his nerves.
"I'd be shaking in my shoes to ride in the Preakness," said Desormeaux, who finished dead last in his first Preakness, in 1988. "Now, not only have I won it twice [in 1998 on Real Quiet and in 2008 on Big Brown], I've lived life. I'll be as cool as a cucumber in the saddle [with Exaggerator on Saturday]."
Trombetta said Desormeaux showed his knack for getting more out of his horses than most jockeys from the earliest age.
Desormeaux understands it might take some racing luck to win his third Preakness and upset heavy favorite Nyquist, who has beaten Exaggerator in all four of their head-to-head matchups, including at Churchill Downs.
That Exaggerator made a strong stretch run and closed the gap, losing by a little more than a length, makes Desormeaux believe his horse has a good chance to stop Nyquist's bid for the Triple Crown.
"Nyquist is the champion, we have to turn the tables," Desormeaux said. "It's going to be a completely different race for him [than the Derby]. ...I think Nyquist is going to [face] something new, which is being very crowded. Exaggerator is trained and true at that."
That Desormeaux has endured a long and well-publicized battle with alcoholism - reportedly flunking four breathalyzer tests, including one as recently as last May and one that cost him a ride in the 2012 Preakness – makes his longevity in the sport even more remarkable.
Even with the issues Desormeaux has had off the track, Capuano isn't surprised he is still riding.
"As athletic as he was, he could just do anything," Capuano said. "As long as he stayed healthy, a guy like him could ride as long as he felt like riding, I would think."
Truth is, Desormeaux never thought he would be racing this long.
"When I was in my 20s," he said, "I thought I would be retired by the time I was 35."
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