Steve Brooks skills led him to move to Chicago, Illinois to race at one of the United States' major venues, Arlington Park.

In the 1959 Citation Handicap, an exhibition race at Washington Park Racetrack to honor the great horse, Brooks rode Round Table to victory.

[2][3] In 1952, he rode Charles T. Fisher's Sub Fleet to a second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby and to fifth in the Preakness Stakes.

In 1979 Brooks was injured when he was thrown to the ground while exercising a horse at Arlington Park in Chicago.

He died a few weeks later after undergoing surgery for a torn esophagus at Saints Mary and Elizabeth Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.