Former jockey Josean Ramirez endured the endless traveling, struggles to maintain a riding weight and anger from disappointed gamblers during a career in horse racing, but it was the injuries that made the Flourtown resident retire from the track.

“I was thrown from a horse about 50 times,” Ramirez said. “Four of them serious. I broke my arm and femur, collapsed a lung, had an L1 vertebrae compression fracture and bruised my ribs.” In one harrowing accident, a horse stepped on his helmet while Ramirez was on the ground and the jockey’s head was cut open. Doctors closed the wound with staples.

Ramirez retired in 2016, but before the injuries became too much, he soldiered on. He rode for nearly a decade, riding in 3,718 races as a full-time professional jockey from 2008 to 2016. He won more than $9 million for the horses' owners. He won 465 races, came in second in 510, and notched a third-place finish in 505 races.

Ramirez began his career in Maryland, racing at Laurel Park, Pimlico and Colonial Downs. He moved to Penn National in Granville, Pa., and then to Lafayette Hill so he could ride at Parc Racetrack in Bensalem.

“During your jockey career,” Ramirez said, “You drive all over the place to any racetrack where your mounts are racing, so you can ride a daytime race in Maryland and then drive to another racetrack for evening racing. It was constant traveling for eight years.”

He chose that career after growing up in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, playing lots of baseball and basketball. Some other boys in town became jockeys, but his only experience growing up with horses was a small family pony (it’s common for families in Puerto Rico to have farm animals on their properties) and riding horses on vacation.

Ramirez spent one and a half years in college, swimming on the school team and majoring in accounting. His father, an electrician, was not very happy when his son announced that he was dropping out of college to attend a professional jockey school.

“My parents wanted me to go to college and get a degree and a job,” Ramirez said. “They didn’t want the life of a professional athlete for me, but my dad did say, ‘You'll always have a room in my house.’”

So Ramirez enrolled in the Equestrian Vocational School in Puerto Rico for two years. On the first day, he weighed 112 pounds and was told he had to get down to 105 or less. He was 5-foot-4, one of the taller students. He ate very little and exercised constantly.

“My mom was not happy about what I was doing to my body,” Ramirez said. “I went to a nutritionist to come up with a plan to eat but stay light. I got down to 103 pounds, but I was running on fumes. My first professional race was in August of 2008. It usually takes quite a bit of time to win your first race, but I won my first race. The other jockeys put shaving cream, eggs, ice, toothpaste, etc., all over me. That's a tradition for jockeys who win their first race. I won my second race by 10 to 15 lengths, but in the third race I finished fourth.”

During his career, Ramirez witnessed the troubling side of racing. He saw “electric shocks and cheating on weight.” Jockeys are weighed before and after each race and horses are tested for drugs after competitions. There have been occasional doping scandals in horse racing.

“They only test a jockey if he/she has committed a foul,” Ramirez said. “I was only drug-tested once. It was a random check. No drug will make a horse ride better.”

Social media was also sometimes a challenge. Messages were great when he was winning, but a loss brought out the trolls. “Some would get really angry and nasty if I did not win with the horse they bet on,” Ramirez said. “I'd have two or three good weeks where I could do no wrong and then two or three weeks that were no good. You just have to keep going. You have to have talent and dedication, but you must have luck also.”

Eventually, Ramirez gave it all up. “I could still perform with integrity until 2016 at age 29,” he said. “Very few stay in it past 30. The average career is only two years. If you do not win races and keep your weight down, you are out.”

After ending his racing career, Ramirez and his wife of six years, Kristin, lived in a Lafayette Hill apartment complex, but they have moved to Flourtown with their son, Marco, 4. Kristin owns Little Wares, a new children’s store in Chestnut Hill. Josean now is a service advisor for an Audi dealer in Fort Washington. He still rides horses for fun and plays golf once a week, shooting as low as 43 for nine holes.

Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.