the prescription painkillers he was given, so he isolated himself for a week and went off the medication cold turkey, after which he felt that he finally began to fully recover from the surgery. Three months after the operation, he returned to racing, working horses in the morning, and accepted mounts for the 2014 Breeders' Cup. On November 22, he won his first race following his surgery, an allowance optional claiming race at Del Mar racetrack. He returned to graded stakes-winning form with a Grade II win in the Grade II Arcadia Handicap on January 31, 2015:53 and achieved his 5,000th North American win on February 13, 2015. In late December 2016, Stevens had hip replacement surgery on his left hip. He anticipated a recovery time of about 12 weeks, after which he declared that he intended to return to racing, but indicated that 2017 might be his last year of racing, with the caveat, "unless I come up with a really good 2-year-old who looks like he'll be a major contender for the 2018 Kentucky Derby." He returned to race riding on March 10, and rode a winning horse on March 11, 2017. Due to his multiple joint replacements, "The Bionic Man" became one of his nicknames. Permanent riding retirement On November 20, 2018 Stevens announced he was retiring as a jockey for good due to a neck injury that resulted from an accident at Del Mar on November 17. What was initially believed to be a pinched nerve turned out to be more serious. “[T]he C-4 is up against the spinal cord,” he said, “There won’t be any comeback from this one.” He made the decision after doctors informed him that the spinal injury could lead to a far more serious issue if he were to ever fall again. In 2019, he returned to being a sportscaster, working as a racing analyst for Fox Sports. Awards Stevens has won numerous awards and prizes in the horse racing industry, including the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award in 1996. In 1997, Stevens entered the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and in 1998, he was voted the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey in the United States. In 1999, he was voted the Mike Venezia Memorial Award for "extraordinary sportsmanship and citizenship". In 2003, he was a member of the first group of inductees to the Washington Thoroughbred Racing