Pound for pound, jockeys are among the world’s most elite athletes. Aboard thousand-pound animals, they hover over a tiny saddle, balancing their weight on their toes while also navigating through a collective of equine locomotives guided by similarly sized pilots. These men and women put their lives on the line daily, often fighting their own bodies to stay both small and strong enough to get the job done. Sometimes that battle asks too much and the rider must find a new outlet for their physical gifts.

For actor and dancer Bobby Montano, his time in the saddle may have been cut short by his genetic destiny, but that transformational experience gifted him an opportunity he could never have anticipated in a show called “SMALL.”

Bitten by the Bug

Bobby Montano grew up within shouting distance of Belmont Park. Born in Bayside Queens, he spent his formative years in Hempstead, Long Island, with his parents: Gloria, a jewelry salesperson, and Salvatore, a professor of art at the Pratt Institute. As a child, Montano “wanted to be a baseball player. I was a huge fan and still am. I was such a huge fan of Buddy Harrelson, who was the shortstop for the New York Mets. I was determined to play for them and take over the shortstop position. That was my goal.”

His major league aspirations went by the wayside, though, after a day at the races. Gloria took her son to Belmont Park in the summer of 1973, after Secretariat had dominated that year’s Triple Crown. At the time, the pre-teen Montano was smaller than his peers, under five feet tall at age 12, his size making him a target for bullies. There in the Belmont paddock, though, Montano realized that being small could be an advantage. When the jockeys entered the paddock, the gathered crowd quieted: “I didn’t know their names, but I just knew when she said the jockeys were coming and to see these little men, and I was little and being beaten up in school. Then for her to say, ‘that’s called respect,’ that these little men, all of a sudden, that everyone was looking at them.”

Montano exercising a horse in the morning. (Courtesy of Bobby Montano)

“I was so taken by them getting on these monster animals and then having control over them and the [crowd’s] reverence for that,” Montano recalled.

The pair were at Belmont that day to visit jockey Roberto Pineda, one of Gloria’s regular customers. A native of Mexico, Pineda was from a family with deep ties to the sport, his brother Alvaro a top jockey before his death in a 1975 starting gate accident, and caught the younger Montano’s eye as the jockeys entered the historic paddock: “When I saw the jockeys coming out, all of them, they came out in a clump except for him. He was by himself. And he was definitely his own man. And I was like, whoa, I just was blown away. There was something about him that was so magnetic.”

That moment ignited something in Montano: he had caught the bug. Gloria resisted introducing her son to Pineda, knowing what she did about life in the saddle. But the young man was determined. He then discovered that NYRA starter Bob Duncan and his wife, Sue, an exercise rider, were among his customers on his paper route and talked his way into early morning trips to the backside, much to his parents’ chagrin.

“I skipped out my window, jumped off my roof, and met her [Sue Duncan] at her house at 4:30 in the morning,” Montano recalled. “And my mother and father are like, ‘Where the hell have you gone to? You can’t do that.’ So I said, ‘I want to work at the racetrack. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.’ ”

Eventually, his parents relented with the caveat that he must stay in school while pursuing his goal. Pineda took the young man under his wing and became Montano’s mentor before his own untimely death in a Pimlico spill in May 1978.

Montano aboard Winter Walk. (Courtesy of Bobby Montano)

A few weeks before Montano’s 17^th birthday, he made his debut as an apprentice at Aqueduct on March 2, 1977. That milestone came with a complication, though: he had broken three ribs in a training incident that morning. Determined to realize his dream, he ignored the pain to guide a gelding named Winter Walk to a sixth-place finish in a six-furlong claiming race. Montano rode six more times over the next six months, his best finishes a fourth at Atlantic City and then at Delaware Park.

The once-undersized preteen was running into an unexpected impediment: he was growing. Montano was fast losing his battle with weight and height despite his efforts to stay small. A chance encounter at Hialeah Park would inspire a new direction for this athlete.

From Saddle to Stage

Montano was working horses at the south Florida track when he spotted a film crew working on scenes from the 1979 movie “The Champ,” starring Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway, and Ricky Schroder. Asked to ride a horse in the background of a shot, the fledgling jockey found the process intriguing. As he grew closer to the realization that his time in the saddle would be short-lived, Montano began to consider his next career.

“I was struggling with my weight and trying to make a comeback, but obviously I could not lose the weight,” the actor remembered. After watching that brief filming process, “I called my father up, and I said, ‘Hey, Pop, I think I want to go to college.’ And my sister got on the other side of the phone back and was like, ‘Bobby, you got to dance. You’re going to go to college, go and dance.’ ”

Montano in “Cats” (Courtesy of Bobby Montano)

A natural athlete his whole life, Montano applied to Adelphi University in New York and pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance, soon earning a spot in the cast of “Cats” on Broadway. From there, Bobby Montano, the Long Island kid who once dreamed of a life in the saddle, found himself on stage with the late Chita Rivera in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” on the big screen dancing with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the 2002 film version of “Chicago,” and on the small screen in guest appearances on “Sex and the City,” “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” “One Life to Live,” and more.

One thing Montano has never forgotten is his time on the backside.

“The best place for me to grow up,” Montano said. “It taught me so many things. There, I was accepted and respected, and I didn’t get that acceptance and respect when I was going to school [as a kid].”

Though his career was measured in months rather than years, this former jock’s time at the track was no mere footnote in his life. Rather, those seven mounts inspired something unexpected for even this veteran performer: a one-man show called “SMALL.”

‘SMALL’ Has a Big Impact

In 1996, Montano appeared in “East of Eden” at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. When director Jon Jory heard about the actor’s stint in the saddle, he pointed out the story at the heart of Montano’s seven mounts: “[Jon asked] ‘What were you doing in between all that time?’ I said, ‘I pleaded with God to keep me small and for me to keep my weight down.’ And he said, ‘That’s your story. It’s about perseverance. People want to root for the underdog.’ He put it in my head to write my story.”

Montano in “SMALL” (Leo Switucha photo)

Premiering at New York’s Penguin Rep Theater in 2022, “SMALL” started out as a screenplay called “Under the Wire,” but later evolved into a one-man show, with the rider-turned-actor on stage diving into the life of a jockey in ways that few artistic endeavors have.

“It’s about the underdog. It’s about fighting to be seen. It’s the little train that could, it’s ‘Rocky,’ but it’s on the racetrack,” the actor shared.

For those outside of the sport, “SMALL” inspires audiences to take on challenges that might scare them. For those inside racing, this one-man show takes on the truths of the backside, “how your passion drives you to things that you would never believe that you would do, to want something so badly that you’re willing to put your life on the line,” the actor shared.

After a 2023 performance in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., at Anthony Melfi’s GMP Farm, former jockeys like Hall of Famer Gary Stevens embraced Montano and said, “Bro, you said it like it was. You said the real deal. Go on, preach.”

In 2024, “SMALL” played Off-Broadway and earned nominations for the Drama Desk, the highest award an Off-Broadway show can receive, as well as an Outer Critics Circle Award. Montano’s ‘Rocky’ on the racetrack story continues to resonate with audiences as he crisscrosses the country honoring those who put their lives on the line each time they are boosted into the saddle.

For Bobby Montano, “SMALL” keeps him connected to this long-gone phase of his life, a place where he has “some unfinished business. I never got to win a race, but I feel like a winner now by having written ‘SMALL’ and having people like Johnny [Velazquez] and Richie Migliore and Gary Stevens putting their stamp of approval on it.”

“SMALL” will be playing at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey from Jan. 14-Feb. 2.