Racing has taken jockey Nik Juarez to many parts of the country. On Preakness day, it is taking him back home.

“What a dream come true that is,” exclaimed Juarez. “As a kid in Maryland, my father (jockey Calixto Juarez) would take me to the stakes barn as a treat to visit those horses. To be riding four or five horses out of that barn, obviously, is a dream come true.”

One of the trainers he would see at the stakes barn is the patriarch of trainers, D. Wayne Lukas, who has rewarded Juarez with a mount in the last Preakness to be run in front of the old Pimlico grandstand. That mount, American Promise, won the Virginia Derby before finishing 16th in the Kentucky Derby.

“Nik is a really good rider,” praised Lukas. “He’s a talented rider. He’s the right size. I like the small guys. He doesn’t have a weight problem and he’s strong and I like his attitude in general. He’s a very positive person and he listens to what I want to do. I put him in the situation a couple times on some of these horses, including some of the others, and he responded very well.”

Two weeks ago in the Kentucky Derby, Juarez moved American Promise up to third on near-even terms with the leaders entering the turn for home before dropping to sixteenth. American Promise got bumped at the beginning of the Run for the Roses, which, despite his size (17 hands), might have led to him coming up empty at the end of it.

“We had a great trip in the Derby,” observed Juarez. “He broke his maiden over a sloppy course so I wasn’t worried about that. Approaching the far turn we had our space in there but things got a little tight. It wasn’t the result we wanted but I think he got a lot out of the race.”

Juarez has come back sporadically to race in his home state but hasn’t seen much of the Maryland tracks since early in his career. In 2017, Juarez won the 2017 Black-eyed Susan with Actress (12-1), a homebred for Gary and Mary West trained by Jason Servis. Juarez last rode in Maryland at Laurel Park in 2021. Being assigned a Preakness date, Juarez is making the most of his homecoming, whether in northwest Baltimore or near Westminster, in Carroll County, where he went to Winters Mill High School. 

“It’s been great coming home,” noted the former Falcon, who was recognized at an assembly of students on Wednesday morning, along with his high school wrestling coach, John Lowe, and his high school advisor, Tom Walker.

Both Lowe and Walker will return the favor with their own attendance at Pimlico on Preakness Day. 

Juarez has come back home to where he got his name. As a young teenager Nicholas Patrick Juarez started to go by “Nik,” after seeing former jockey Nik Goodwin display his name on jockey pants. The rider can also recite many of Preakness stretch run calls, including his favorite, the 1989 stretch duel between Sunday Silence and Easy Goer “all the way down the lane.” Juarez suggests that his middle name comes from the ride that day of Sunday Silence’s rider Patrick Valenzuela, which at the very least makes for good lore. 

Juarez woke up Tuesday morning at his mom’s house after his long drive the previous night from Louisville with his rottweiler, an aspiring service dog named June. While he drove home at night with his dog, he rose with his horse Valid.

“I woke up in the morning and my horse is out in the backyard,” said Juarez about Valid, his first stakes winner that launched his career. “He was right out there as soon as I woke up. That was a great gift.”

Juarez never forgot how Valid skyrocketed his riding career in 2017 by winning a graded stakes race the first week after he lost his apprenticeship. In fact, he tracked Valid’s subsequent racing career and later purchased the Virginia-bred when his career was over.

“I don’t know of any other jockey that would track him around the country and buy him for $15,000 when his career was over,” observed Carol Linton, Juarez’s mother who boards Valid for her son at her Carroll County farm a half hour away from Pimlico.

Linton is alongside for the ride figuratively and literally.

Linton will pony horses over Preakness weekend “again this year for the last time.” She became a professional nurse, ponying horses through school and once working at the Mount Sinai hospital adjacent to Pimlico Race Course. If you are wondering, she very well could be leading her son up to the Preakness starting gate, a conversation that has been in the works. When she told him that she wanted to pony him in the Preakness, Juarez anecdotally responded, “Let’s get through the Derby first.”

“It’s so exciting about him being in Maryland riding in the Preakness, I just so wish my dad and mom were alive,” said Linton. 

Linton’s father Charlie was a steeplechase trainer and outrider while her mother Joanne owned steeplechase horses. 

Juarez’s Preakness week appearances include numerous interviews with local media and a stop at the nearby Mount Washington Tavern, where mother and son once captured a karaoke prize. 

“I started singing James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend and he got up and sang it with me,” recalled Linton.

In his hometown of Westminster Thursday evening, he will be participating in an event Greene Turtle where, as part of a discounted dinner bill, a donation will shared between Beyond the Wire and Winters Mill High School Athletic Boosters, both entities near to Juarez. Linton has repurposed numerous horses from racing.

American Promise may be the first Preakness mount for Juarez, and his riding career may have taken him far from Baltimore. But Juarez remembers where he came from.

“I’m ready for a crabcake,” said Juarez. “Just a good ol’ crabcake with Old Bay.”