He asked her if this made up for him dropping out of high school. She fought back tears and nodded yes.

Smith knows about tears. He has shed them for horses whose demises have haunted him, especially Prairie Bayou, whom he rode to victory in the 1993 Preakness Stakes, which helped make him a big-time rider.

Three weeks later, in the Belmont Stakes, the gelding sustained multiple fractures in his left leg and was put down. Smith was inconsolable afterward, tears falling as he tried to explain what happened, as he replayed the moment into the night.

In 2010, Smith wept again when he was unable to close out an unbeaten 20-race career for the peerless mare Zenyatta. She lost narrowly in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, after which Smith publicly took the blame, which is another plus in his column for fellow jockeys and horse trainers.

“Mike fell on the sword with Zenyatta,” Justify’s trainer, Bob Baffert, said.

Smith communicates with more than just horses. He has earned the trust of the sport’s top trainers, as well as the nickname Big Money Mike, by giving honest assessments of a horse’s performance as soon as he dismounts.

He remains upbeat and focuses on the positive. It’s not what the horse can do for him, but what Smith can do for the horse. Once Baffert was upset with a ride Smith had given one of his horses but snapped at his wife, Jill, when she suggested telling the rider directly.

“It’s like yelling at Bambi,” Baffert told her.

Smith’s midlife riding renaissance has been powered by a devotion to the weight room, cross-training and running. Neck down, Smith looks like a 30-year-old. Neck up, he is comfortable with how the hard knocks have shaped him.