FOR GONZALEZ, HIGH PRICE FOR IMMORTALITY BY KEVIN MODESTI:.

There are two ways for a thoroughbred jockey to achieve immortality. One is to win the Kentucky Derby.

J.C. Gonzalez took the more common way Thursday at Fairplex Park. He died on the racetrack.

Maybe there would have been a Derby in the future of the 23-year-old, Mexican-born Reseda resident who had made a first, faint mark on the sport by winning the 1998 riding championship on the small oval that claimed his life.

But the chilling fact of the matter is that a young man who chooses a career of clinging to the backs of 40 mph animals has a better chance to end up draped in lilies than in roses.

There's one Derby winner a year. The rules of thumb on jockeys' mortality are that an average of two a year will be killed in races and that about a dozen out of every 1,000 will meet their fates in action.

Something like 2,500 injuries are reported to the Jockeys' Guild each year. Keep in mind that there are only a little more than 2,500 jockeys in North America.

``It's not a question of if you're going to get hurt,'' Guild national manager John Giovanni has said. ``It's a question of when you're going to get hurt, and how severely.''

Severely enough, and a jockey shares an all-too-permanent place in history with dead race-car drivers, boxers and matadors, and assassinated politicians. People who knew the risks and accepted them as the price of glory.

Any veteran fan of the local thoroughbred circuit can tell you about George Woolf, a Santa Anita Handicap winner who mysteriously toppled off a horse in the track's clubhouse turn and was killed; about Jack Westrope, flung against a post inside the Hollywood Park rail and killed; about Alvaro Pineda, smashed against a poorly padded starting gate at Santa Anita and killed.

Gonzalez replaces Pineda with the ``not since'' distinction among Southern California thoroughbred riders.

Harness fans will tell you about driver Shelly Goudreau, who tried to bail out the back of a sulky at Hollywood Park and struck his head on the hard-packed soil. Quarterhorse fans recall Juan Limon, whose death at the Los Alamitos finish line in 1994 made him the last man to die in a local race of any breed.

According to the statistics, if you take into account the paralyzing injuries as well as the fatal ones, that kind of immortality is more likely to happen to a little man in a helmet, flak jacket and boots than any other athlete.

There are two ways of interpreting those stats: Way too many jockeys get killed and maimed, or it's amazing it doesn't happen more often.

Jockeys bounce to their feet after horrific-looking accidents, and fans come to think of them as bullet-proof. Riders get scooped into ambulances and rushed to hospitals with what turn out to be minor injuries, and race-watchers learn - incorrectly - to quit worrying.

I've watched races regularly for a decade and I've seen jockeys killed a hundred times. J.C. Gonzalez was the first who actually died.

Kent Desormeaux was thrown from a crazy horse named Judge Hammer in front of the Hollywood Park grandstand one soggy afternoon at Hollywood Park in 1992, was kicked in the forehead by a trailing runner, and was briefly motionless in the mud. For my money, he was lucky to escape with a fractured skull and one deaf ear.

Desormeaux was back riding at Santa Anita just six weeks later, and bravely sent his first horse through a gap along the rail to win. Jockeys, of all athletes, recover the quickest from injury because they're incredibly fit and they don't earn if they don't ride.

Gonzalez was out for three months after breaking his pelvis and a leg at Santa Anita in 1997. He won with his first mount back.

``He presented himself not as crazy, but as brave,'' said John Daley, assistant to trainer Sandy Shulman, whose horse Wolfhunt broke down under Gonzalez on Thursday. ``You knew he was going to give you an honest effort.''

You'll hear racegoers say they feel sadder for dead horses than for dead jockeys. The horses, they note, weren't permitted a career choice.

You didn't hear anybody say that Thursday. You won't hear it for a while.

It takes a heroic bravery to ride the battle-scarred horses who populate the county fairs, even the relatively classy Los Angeles County Fair. When an athlete like that dies, a hero is lost.

``I'll never watch a race the same way again, I know that,'' Daley said Friday morning.

Daley watches from the safety of a trainer's box. Imagine watching from a saddle.

``I've been very fortunate in my career, so I tend to get a Superman complex, like I'm invincible,'' said four-time Fairplex riding champion Corey Black.

``Back to reality, boys.''

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PHOTO (color) Family and friends pay their respects to jockey J.C. Gonzalez on Friday at Fairplex Park: From left, ex-jockey Larry Gilligan, jockeys David Flores and Danny Boag, Betsy Aquino, Elena Aquino (Gonzalez's fiancee) and her sister Angela.

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press