The seizure he suffered April 6 is related to an accident he suffered in 2003.

“I got through breezing a horse and rode back into the barn and had already kicked my feet out of the irons when a guy came out of a stall with a wheel-barrow and spooked him,” Kaenel said. “I went off the back, and he caught me right under the helmet with his foot. I had a seizure the next morning.”

Doctors prescribed medication, but he suffered several more seizures in the following years, even as he was trying to revive his riding career at Canterbury Park in Minnesota in 2005.

On April 6, while he was attending an alcohol counseling session, Kaenel suffered a severe seizure and cracked his head on a cement floor.

He was rushed to a hospital, then flown to another for a craniotomy — surgery in which doctors opened his skull to relieve pressure from swelling. He spent 12 days in the hospital and doesn't even remember the first eight.

Crough and son Kyle rushed to his bedside and were told by doctors that Kaenel was babbling nonsense. But Kyle realized that his father was spouting racetrack lingo.

“He’d get out of bed and they’d ask him where he was going and he’d say, ‘I have to get to the room and get in the box,’ ” Crough said, referring to the jockey’s routine of entering the “sweat box” to lose weight before the races.

Kaenel also talked about the 1982 Preakness.

Bill Vassar / Golden Gate Fields Kyle Kaenel has followed his father's path and is a jockey.

“He was stuck in 1982, and it all kind of circulated around the Preakness,” Crough said. “Once when Kyle said he was going to get a cup of coffee, Jack said, ‘I don’t give a f---! Shoemaker’s 6 to 5.”

In addition to paying his medical bills, Kaenel is motivated to ride so he can compete in a match race with Kyle.

“He called me up … and asked, ‘Dad, when you going to get back to riding?’ ” Kaenel said. “And he said, ‘You better hurry up, because I’m getting better and better every day.’ ”

For the younger Kaenel, his father’s return would be only half a success story.

“For some people, alcohol is like a bad shadow,” he said. “You see some people that can get away from it and some people that can’t. I hope he can get away from it, even if it’s not to come back to riding but just to live a normal life.”

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