This 71-year-old jockey has saddled up in more than 53,000 races. He doesn’t plan to stop soon

(CNN) — On Saturday afternoon, the rich and the rarefied will gather in Saratoga Springs, New York, a quaint Victorian Era throwback town where the horses who visit for races often cross the streets like pedestrians.

Belmont Park is still putting the finishing touches on its $455 million renovations and so, for one more year, the Belmont Stakes will be run at Saratoga Race Course. There is no Triple Crown on the line, but the race will still draw eyeballs, what with the caliber of horses expected to make the starting gate. Golden Tempo, the Kentucky Derby winner, will be there as will be the Derby favorites, Commandment and Renegade.

Another world away, where the pants are denim not seersucker and the only millinery confections come with ballcap brims or cowboy hat wings, Perry Wayne Ouzts will put his boot in a stirrup, launch himself into a saddle and go to work.

Ouzts is not famous, and if you’re measuring by money, he is not rich. His horses have never been wrapped in a blanket of roses nor have any of his races been broadcast nationally. Yet when he grabs hold of the reins for yet another ride, the jockey will also grasp the very thing every human craves: Contentment.

At the age of 10, Ouzts turned in an essay to his teacher, declaring his intention to become a professional jockey. He realized his dream at 18 and for the past 53 years, save for days off for injury and a few family vacations, has woken up every day and realized it again.

Now 71, Ouzts holds the record for starts among North American jockeys, with 53,736 to his credit.

“I can’t explain it. I never found anything better than being on horseback,’’ he told CNN Sports. “It just always felt like home.’’

It is not the easiest place to put up stakes. Riding horses for a living is an unforgiving profession, a career built on discipline and stamina and riddled with risk and injury. A group of New Zealand veterinarians once tried to pin down the average length of a jockey’s career, a tricky bit of math, considering so much of it depends on opportunities to get rides.

They did their best to mine the data and wound up with a career span between 10.9 and 15.9 years, “with a strongly skewed distribution toward the lower end of the scale.’’

But Ouzts, raised in Riverdale, Arkansas, never thought much about the other options, either. Factory jobs held no appeal and when he went to register for the draft at the height of the Vietnam War, he was sent back home. Too small and too skinny.

Horses never held the same fascination for anyone else in his immediate family.

“Two brothers and a sister and they couldn’t care less,’’ he says.

But his cousins who lived down the road did. A few were trainers, another a jockey, still another involved with show horses.

They planted the seed and Ouzts nurtured and fed it until he finally finished high school and could grow into it on his own. He followed his cousins to Chicago to learn the trade and by March 1973, won his first race.

It was a heady time to be in the business. Two months after Ouzts anonymously crossed the finish line at Beulah Park near Columbus, Ohio, Secretariat charged down the stretch to win the Kentucky Derby. Big Red’s run to the Triple Crown, ending as he moved like a “tremendous machine’’ to a 31-length Belmont win, captured the country’s attention.

That same year, famed jockey Pat Day, who would go on to win nine Triple Crown races and become one of the greatest in history, also got his start.

Ouzts has ridden in 15,413 races since 2005.

“I see a lot of guys that I knew, they can barely walk,’’ he says. “They look horrible. I’m still getting on six, seven horses a day.’’

The lines on his face – deep crags channeled by a life riding headlong into the wind – are the only thing that gives away Ouzts’ age. He’s weighed the same – 110 pounds – for more than 50 years and largely rides the same, too. Around the track, he’s known as Scoot ‘N Boot for his ability to break from the gate in a hurry.

The job requires lifestyle discipline and Ouzts has it in droves. He’s avoided the pitfalls of cutting weight by maintaining a near monk’s devotion to meal prep. For as long as he can remember, Ouzts starts his mornings with a light-weight workout followed by breakfast – a cup of coffee with Sweet‘N Lo, and two sweet rolls. Midday – he calls it supper – he eats cheese and crackers or a ham and cheese sandwich.

If he needs afternoon fuel, he opts for fruit. Dinner is whatever he likes, with an occasional ice cream treat. Ouzts quit drinking altogether more than a quarter century ago, his only two vices falling directly in line with his profession. Ouzts likes to zip around when he can in his little two-seater convertible or his motorcycle.

Injuries are part of the job, and Ouzts has tap danced through a few near catastrophic ones.

In 1992, he spent five days in intensive care and five more in the hospital with his jaw wired shut, a tracheotomy, a broken nose and a broken shoulder. In 2006 – when he was already 51 – he was tossed during a race. He not only cracked five vertebrae, but his own horse also landed on his leg and crushed it and another broke his arm.

“The doctor said, ‘I’m sorry but your jockey days are over,” Ouzts says. “I looked at him and just said, ‘No.’”

In 2007, Ouzts had 1,093 mounts.

“I’d love to see that doctor about now,” he says with a chuckle.

Yet for all of his accomplishments – with 7,534 wins, he ranks fifth among US jockeys – Ouzts does not have a single graded stakes win. It’s not entirely intentional, but not unplanned, either. Someone once offered him a Derby mount – he didn’t say who or what horse – but it was a crazy longshot and Ouzts couldn’t see the point.

“And I like winning,’’ he says. “That horse wasn’t going to win.’’

Years back, he had a mount in the fifth race on Oaks Day at Churchill Downs. Unprepared for the crowds he was walking into, Ouzts arrived a little late and the cops directing traffic wouldn’t even let him on the backside. He wound up doubling back to the houses along Longfield Avenue behind the track, paying someone to park in their yard.

By the time he got to the jocks’ room, after lugging his tack a good 12 blocks, he vowed never again.

Which suited Ouzts just fine. It was never about the glitz and the glam. It was about the horses. He has no real plans on retirement.

“I’ll just keep going until I can’t, I think,’’ he says.

But at 71, he is able to take a real stock of his life. He and his wife, Toni, have been married for 42 years and have built their house in Hebron, Kentucky. They raised two boys and sent them off to college. One works at a retirement home; the other teaches English in Japan.

To be certain, Ouzts has slowed down. Where once he averaged more than 1,000 mounts a year, he’s closer to 250 these days. Supply and demand has something to do with it. Trainers, he rightly points out, don’t necessarily seek 71-year-old jockeys. But he’s also happy to ease back a little. His wife is involved with training horses and these days, many of rides are through her connections.

But even if he isn’t racing, he’s riding. He helps her as an exercise rider most every day and still feels that same thrill he felt the first time he put his boot in a stirrup.

“I can’t even tell you what it’s like,’’ he says. “It’s a blur. That’s all I wanted. I’ve made a decent living riding horses. I feel blessed every day. I think that’s enough, isn’t it?”

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