SARATOGA SPRINGS — An exercise rider who died Tuesday, a day after he was in an accident at Saratoga Race Course, may have had a medical problem before he fell off the horse he was riding.

Parker Buckley, 40, was an exercise rider for trainer Steve Asmussen and used to be a jockey. Buckley died about midday Tuesday at Albany Medical Center Hospital, where he was airlifted after being taken by ambulance to Saratoga Hospital on Monday.

Buckley’s close friend and Asmussen’s assistant trainer, Scott Blasi, said something was amiss with Buckley as he galloped a horse at the Oklahoma Training Track Monday morning.

“I saw Parker go by, and I could tell something wasn’t right,” Blasi said Tuesday. “I think something happened to Parker before he came off that horse.”

Blasi didn’t see the accident happen, but said Buckley, an experienced horseman, wouldn’t just fall from a horse.

The hospital and the New York Racing Association would not release any other information about Buckley’s cause of death or his fall. NYRA spokesman John Lee issued a statement expressing condolences to Buckley’s family.

Asmussen told the Daily Racing Form that a CAT scan showed Buckley had blood on the brain, and he was placed in a medically induced coma. The Blood-Horse magazine’s Web site reported that Buckley was kept on life support until after his family arrived at the hospital.

Blasi said he wasn’t comfortable commenting on medical matters.

Saratoga Springs police were not notified there was an accident and aren’t investigating it, said spokesman Lt. Greg Veitch.

‘a very good horseman’

Blasi and Buckley were friends outside the job, too, and had dinner with several other people from Asmussen’s stable at Sergio’s Sunday evening, the night before Buckley’s accident. Buckley could get anyone laughing, Blasi said.

“He’s just the complete package,” he said.

Blasi first met Buckley 10 years ago in New Orleans, where Buckley was riding as a jockey. He had worked for Asmussen for the past 16 months.

“When he decided to quit riding, he got in contact with us,” Blasi said.

Buckley was the regular rider for Pyro, an Asmussen-trained horse that may run in the Travers Stakes, The Blood-Horse reported.

“Parker was more than a good exercise rider; he was a very good horseman,” he said. “When we were done training in the morning, he was willing to do anything after that.”

It’s the first fatal riding accident at the track since Sept. 19, 1996, when Elizabeth Russello, a horse owner and assistant trainer, was killed on the Oklahoma track when the horse she was riding reared and fell on her.

People who work with racehorses often get injured, said Chris McCarron, founder and director of The North American Racing Academy in Lexington, Ky., which trains jockeys.

“It’s a very, very dangerous occupation. Those of us who engage in that understand and accept it,” McCarron said.

The Journal of the American Medical Association determined that nationwide, there are 35 injuries involving jockeys every week, he said. When McCarron takes a new class of would-be jocks into orientation on Friday, he’ll emphasize the danger of the business.

“They have to calculate, is the reward versus the risk worth all the effort?”