PONY UP, BROTHER
Twin jockeys Learie and Lenny Seecharan from Trinidad have had a hard time reining in their excitement for the city after being spurred to make the move by a Kentucky Derby champ.
One wears a pink jockey ’s cap, one a blue one, so people can tell Lenny and Learie Seecharan apart.
The problem is, almost no one remembers which one wears which (the odds favour it being Learie in pink).
The brothers are Hastings Racecourse’s newest daily double, identical 22-year-old twins from Trinidad: Lenny arrived last summer and Learie joined him for the 2018 race season.
“I’m really happy I came here, I’m really getting a shot,” Lenny said. “It’s a really good track, we have good guys here.”
Learie was eager to follow his brother’s lead.
“I watched him back home last summer, the races looked pretty exciting,” he said. “Just from watching him while I was back home, I wanted to be here.”
The twins heard of Hastings after jockey Mario Gutierrez, who cut his teeth racing at Hastings, won the Kentucky Derby two times.
Now they’re working — and learning from — another legend, Aaron Gryder.
Gryder came to prominence riding a 20-1 long shot that was blind in one eye and named One Eyed Romeo to victory at Santa Anita Park in California. In 2009, Gryder rode Well Armed to win the world’s richest race by 14 lengths, the $6-million Dubai World Cup.
And this summer Gryder added to his list of accomplishments by winning five races in a row at Hastings, achieving the feat for the seventh time in his career.
“I’m really proud to be around these guys, guys like Aaron, they ’re teaching us stuff every day,” Lenny said. “With what I learn here, I can go back home and I’m much better when I go back home.
“There are some really topnotch jockeys at Hastings.”
When the brothers enter the same gate at the start of a race, which has happened a couple of times this summer, the familial bonds dissolve temporarily and the other becomes just more livery to finish ahead of.
“I treat him like any other jockey,” Lenny said. “I don’t give him a shot. Out there we’re competitors, back in the paddock we’re brothers again.”
They ’re tall for jockeys, standing maybe 5-foot-8, but slight, weighing in at just 102 pounds.
Growing up in the Caribbean, they played a lot of cricket in wicket-mad Trinidad, as well as soccer. They were always good athletes.
It wasn’t until relatively recently, however, they decided to follow in their dad’s jockey boots, making their debuts as 19-year-old apprentices at the mile-long Santa Rosa Park in Trinidad in 2015.
“They’re really professional, really polite, really hard workers,” said Nichelle Milner, the racing secretary at Hastings.
“The horsemen really like them and they’re so eager to learn.”
Trainers like them because they let their horses run and don’t try to force them to do something they don’t want to.
For example, Lenny was on Silent Eagle recently and the trainer told him, “Don’t send him, don’t hold him, don’t hit him.” That was OK by Lenny. “And he just went to the lead and won, I just sat on him,” he said.
“I will never forget that horse.”