Some people believe there is unfairness in the way the Triple Crown is run. You also could argue that it is unfair to consider a jockey a loser for falling short in the Belmont Stakes after he has won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Victor Espinoza, though, thinks the unfairness that really matters is any that deprives a child of a fair shot at life.
For years, the jockey who hopes to ride American Pharoah into history Saturday has been determined to do something about the latter. He donates 10 percent of everything he wins to City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment center in Duarte, California — near Espinoza’s home, and not really all that far from the dairy farm in Mexico on which he grew up as the second youngest of 12.
No one in his family suffered from childhood cancer and no one instructed him to tithe. “I just saw one kid with that disease and that’s how I changed my life. I changed the way I think. Pretty much I changed everything,” he said. “For me, health is No. 1.”