Tammi Piermarini is Boston Strong. Even though she ranks as the all-time third winningest female jockey in North America and just enhanced her stellar status by capturing her fourth straight leading rider title and fifth overall at the recently concluded Suffolk Downs 2013 live meet, she remains loyal to her roots.
“New England is my home and I love riding at Suffolk,” said the 46-year-old Leominster, MA resident who began riding racehorses almost 30 years ago after a career in the show ring. “I have been asked to move to California and ride for a couple of different owners and I also have an offer to go to New York, but I’m staying here. You bet I’m Boston Strong.”
The purses and the spotlight are much bigger and far brighter on the major Southern California and New York circuits, and the rivalry in the riders’ room is more intense. Despite being the top dog in these environs, the highly-competitive Piermarini, who has won races at 15 different tracks over her 30-year career, was still concerned about holding her own at Suffolk when the season began.
Find out what's happening in Sudburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“I’m very happy to have won the title again, but I was very nervous at the beginning of the year,” she explained. “(Trainer) Marcus (Vitali) didn’t come back this year and I had been riding first call for him, so I didn’t think I could win the title. But I hadn’t gone anyplace else to ride over the winter because I stayed home to take care of my (seriously ill) father-in-law. So I was the first one here when everybody shipped in and I got a jump start. I was getting on a lot of horses in the mornings for a lot of different trainers and I was really fit.”
The trainers noticed and responded positively so the phone of John Piermarini, Tammi’s agent and husband, never stopped ringing. By the end of the 80-day meet, she had won 101 races and her mounts bankrolled $1.1 million in purses.
Find out what's happening in Sudburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“When the trainers who never rode me before because of Marcus found out that I was now eligible to ride for anybody, they gave me their business,” she said. “I’m very lucky and I’m grateful to have had everybody back me and give me the keys to their Mercedes out there (on the track) this year.”
While it is indisputable that only two other women, National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame inductee Julie Krone (3,704 wins) and Rosemary Homeister, Jr. (2,627 wins as of Nov. 17) have made more trips to the winner’s circle than Piermarini, the exact number of her victories is a mystery.
That’s because prior to her marriage she rode under her maiden name as Tammi Marie Campbell and her records were not accurately merged afterward.
“I know I’m pretty darn close to 2,300 wins,” said Piermarini, who now has a combined 2,293 under both surnames according to Equibase statistics. “Even with the combined stats, I know I’m missing some. They were lost because of my name change.”
The misses notwithstanding, her 15,732 mounts have earned just shy of $20 million in purses. All of her stats are impressive, and must be considered even more so because she missed a lot of time in the saddle over a period of 10 years and then had three children, Izabella, Johnny and Sophia, now aged 12 to 3.
“I’m really proud of my longevity,” she said. “I’ve been blessed, knock on wood. I’m not complaining, but this business is especially tough for girls. Jill (Jellison, her sister Suffolk rider) and I have been around for a long time. I was really sick during that 10 year span and I’ve still been able to produce those numbers. No other woman has been this successful coming back after three separate years of pregnancy.”
Piermarini, who famously returned to the saddle against her doctor’s orders shortly after undergoing a Caesarian section, has no thoughts of quitting any time soon. She, John and the children are soon heading to Arizona so she may join the jockey colony at Turf Paradise for the winter months, but she plans to be back in the Spring.
“I want to get to 3,000 wins and I hope to make it into the New England Turf Writers Association Hall of Fame before my father-in-law passes. I want my father to be able to see that, too. I wish my mom were still alive and could maybe see that happen one day,” she said. “I also have the goal to make it into the national Hall of Fame.”
Those goals are in reach because she is riding as well as ever.
“It’s all about the horse and getting on the right ones in the right spots. This is not jockey racing, it’s horse racing,” said. “And it’s what I absolutely love doing.”
In other end-of-meet honors, John Rigattieri was Suffolk’s leading trainer for the 10th consecutive year with 57 wins from 199 starters, and Frank Bertolino’s Monarch Stable captured the leading owner trophy for the third consecutive year with 31 victories.
-30-
