JOCKEY SADDLED WITH TROUBLE.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Addiction can't be broken like a wild horse. You don't go to the whip down the stretch and coax sobriety out of somebody.

For years, well-meaning people in the horse racing community have tried to steer jockey Pat Valenzuela away from drugs and alcohol, toward a more healthful life. What they've found is that you can lead addicts to help's door, but you can't force them to step inside of themselves.

Today Valenzuela, one of the most talented riders of his or any other generation, will appear at the Santa Anita Municipal Court in Monrovia for a pretrial hearing to address charges of corporal injury to a spouse, battery and false imprisonment.

Valenzuela was arrested last Friday - on his 35th birthday - after an altercation with his wife Kimberly, who told Arcadia police officers that her husband of eight months verbally abused her and physically attacked her during a drunken altercation at their home.

For Valenzuela, it's not the first slip, merely the latest in a slow but inexorable descent that has seen the one-time Kentucky Derby winner draw a dozen fines or suspensions since 1983 for various incidents relating to his behavior.

Around Santa Anita racetrack, the people who long have propped Valenzuela up because of his extraordinary riding ability and engaging personality wearily express hope that he finally has hit rock bottom. ``Is this the one that's going to make him come to his senses?'' they ask one another.

It's a long shot to be sure, but if we were Valenzuela's counsel, we would steer the jockey toward an admission of culpability, entreat him to acknowledge the hold alcohol and drugs long have had over him.

To admit one's dependency is the first step toward overcoming it. But for someone who built an impressive career on getting his horses out of the gate quickly, Valenzuela has been very slow to make the break toward becoming a winner away from the track.

People who know Valenzuela speak of a man looking at his life as if wearing blinders. They talk about denial as thick as a horse's mane. Said one, ``The guy you're trying to help has got to want to be helped.''

In 1989, after riding Sunday Silence to victory in the Kentucky Derby, Valenzuela told a network television audience, ``Say `No' to drugs. Here and all over the world.''

Valenzuela, who had tested positive for cocaine in New Mexico the previous year but had gotten off on a legal technicality, told reporters at the time of his Derby victory, ``My life is clean. I'm clean and I couldn't be happier.''

But within months of winning the Derby and the Preakness aboard Sunday Silence, Valenzuela would get slapped with a drug-related 60-day suspension that prevented him from riding the horse in the Breeders' Cup.

From there, Valenzuela fell into a pattern of suspensions sandwiched between successes. In 1990, he was suspended for six months for missing riding assignments. A doctor who dealt extensively with athletes examined Valenzuela at the time and recommended that he be suspended from racing for one year so as to regain the reins to his life.

Valenzuela and his attorney responded by threatening to take legal action against the doctor for defamation of character. So much for removing Valenzuela from the day-to-day pressures of racing that undoubtedly fed his self-destructive habits.

The racing community shares some culpability in Valenzuela's plight, if only for seeing the tremendous talent instead of the troubled person when it suited them. As long as Valenzuela could produce wins, the racing community would provide mounts.

In a career that spans three decades, Valenzuela has ridden horses that have won nearly $100 million and close to 3,000 races. But what price success?

It's easy to wonder in hindsight if the pressures of controlling a 1,000-pound beast in sometimes chaotic conditions, of containing one's weight and of carrying on a family name synonymous with racing excellence - and, sadly, addiction - didn't conspire against the jockey.

The 1990s have seen Valenzuela serve one suspension after another for refusing a drug test or failing to fulfill his riding engagements.

As recently as two months ago, Valenzuela received a five-day suspension from Del Mar stewards for violating the rules on being excused from mounts.

Track stewards are not stupid; they long have suspected substance abuse was at the root of Valenzuela's erratic behavior. But as long as he continued to dodge the drug tests that could confirm their suspicions, their hands were tied.

They had to let him ride. And astonishingly, he always seemed able to answer the trumpet's blare. During the 1996 Del Mar season, he finished second behind Alex Solis in the jockey standings.

In his heady days of 1989, it seemed Valenzuela might have 20 more years of sublime racing ahead. Eight years later, he has three victories in 62 races. The horses no longer can keep pace with Valenzuela's demons.

``I think he's hearing a voice a lot stronger than himself,'' said someone who once worked with Valenzuela.

If there's a voice Valenzuela ought to heed, it's David Thompson's. A former NBA standout with Denver and Seattle, Thompson served time in a minimum-security detention center in 1987 after assaulting his wife.

``I kept telling myself addiction will never happen to a guy like me,'' Thompson told Sports Illustrated shortly before his induction last year into the Basketball Hall of Fame. ``Things had to fall totally apart before I finally realized it could.''