Man on a Horse

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The little man slouched in the saddle, round-shouldered and solemn, like a cowboy after a long day. He seemed oblivious of the crowd, but it was just a mannerism: he knew full well that all eyes were on him. And he knew too that the mere sight of Jockey Eddie Arcaro is enough to make hundreds of red-blooded New York horse-players boo.

But this time it was different. As Jockey Arcaro (rhymes with sparrow) paraded to the post last week in the first race at Jamaica,'applause pattered down from the stands. Eddie sat up straight, took off his cap and waved it high. He rated the cheer, even if it was a pleasant surprise. Three days before, he had won the Kentucky Derby--and become the first jock in history to win the Derby four times. He was now after another honor: to be the first to win horse racing's Big Three (Derby, Preakness, Belmont Stakes) twice.

Baking Powder Magic. This week at Pimlico, on the fringe of Baltimore, he will be boosted up on Citation, the same long-barreled bay colt he won with at Louisville, and shoot for the Preakness. The race will be half a furlong shorter than the Derby, a difference that favors Citation's chief rival, a stablemate named Coaltown.

From Green Spring and Worthington Valleys the horsy set will prance in. Up from Prince Georges and Anne Arundel Counties will come farmers whose interest in hot-blooded horses runs back a hundred years. All of them will think twice before betting against Citation. He belongs to Calumet Farm, the "baking powder" barn, which has found a magic recipe for raising breadwinners. Calumet owns more than its share of the best horses (Armed, Citation, Coaltown, Bewitch, Fervent) and has the best trainers, the Jones boys--shrewd old Ben ("B.A.") Jones and his son Jimmy. In Jockey Eddie Arcaro they have the best known, most respected and most hated jockey in the land.

Banana Nose. Why do horseplayers jeer the jockey they freely acknowledge to be the best? The fan who shouts, "Hey you, Banana Nose, drop dead!" would have a hard time explaining it. If pinned down, he. would probably admit that he thinks Arcaro is so good he can win whenever he wants to. And thus, when Arcaro loses, the fan suspects something fishy is going on.

Horseplayers are as suspicious as they are superstitious. The $2 bettor, his nose buried in a Racing Form, usually has a queasy feeling that there are things going on that he wots not of, but that the wise boys wot right well. He is peculiarly sensitive to the great American dread of being played for a sucker. But he still thinks he has a chance--if he can dope some angles.

The Inside Dope. Up in the third row of the grandstand, he studies the horse's weight, his past performances, the track conditions, the jockey's record. Then he tries to weigh a few imponderables: e.g., how badly do the owner and the jockey want to win this race? The wise-guy fan isn't particularly horrified by the dark shenanigans he suspects. He only wishes he were in on them.

How much funny business does go on? Often, the jockey and the horse he is to ride have never met before. The trainer, who has a disillusioned parent's knowledge of the horse's habits and possibilities, gives the jockey a quick fillin, and tells him how to ride the race. Once on the track, the jockey has, like the soldier, the privilege of disregarding instructions and taking the rap for it.

Sometimes, a trainer will imply that this isn't the day: "This horse is not up to a hard race. If he gets tired, don't punish him." Except in flagrant cases, nobody can tell by watching a race whether a jockey is trying or not. Like pro wrestlers, they can put on a great show -- lots of whip-waving and scuffling. (If they want to lose, all they need to do is loosen the reins an instant and let the horse's head drop, or run into a jam, or lose a few lengths on a turn.)

On the best tracks, known to horsemen as "the big apple," where rich stables race for prestige as well as profits, not nearly so many horses are "pulled" as the glower ing fans suspect. And if Eddie Arcaro is glowered at more than anybody, it is really a backhanded compliment: fans can't understand how he can lose. Arcaro tries to be philosophical about the booing: "I guess they're entitled to beef if they want to. They're losing their money."

Bedroom Eyes. At 32, Edward George Arcaro looks like a cross between a sleepy Mexican vaquero and Cyrano de Bergerac. He is Italian by descent, Ohioan by birth. His face is thin and olive-complexioned, falling away on all sides from his celebrated nose. (Pretty, blonde Mrs. Arcaro sees beyond the end of his nose, thinks the most striking thing about his face are his "big, brown bedroom eyes.")

In his jockey costume, he looks deceptively thin. Most of his 112 pounds are padded about muscular shoulders, which taper to a slim waist and toothpick legs. In the jockeys' room, where he is cock of the walk, he is by turns charming and churlish, chatty and mum (he likes to read between races -- usually bestselling novels). Sometimes, when another rider has done something in a race he doesn't like, his dander rises and he tosses equipment around the room. He can swear as proficiently as any jockey, but when the occasion calls he can speak perfect parlor English.

Unlike the great cigar-puffing Jockey Tod Sloan, who went in for monocles, valets and lavish entertainment (Tod once threw a $25,000 party for Actress Lillian Russell), Arcaro believes in the durable dollar. His chief extravagance is clothes; he owns 40 suits, mostly conservative greys and blues. He drives a 1947 Cadillac, reads FORTUNE to keep hep on industry, and invests in such blue-chip stocks as A.T. & T. He likes Scotch, but mostly on Saturday nights. He knows what happened to some of his predecessors.

Carroll Shilling, winner of the 1912 Kentucky Derby, and considered by many the most inspired horseman who ever held a pair of reins, has been in & out of sanitariums for alcoholism in recent years. Buddy Ensor, after losing many a bout with the bottle, died last winter in New York City. Laverne Fator, perhaps the iciest jockey who ever rode a horse, killed himself a few years ago. Tod Sloan, who made and squandered over a million dollars, ended up wheedling dimes from street crowds, billed as "the strangest dwarf in the world."*

Troubleshooter. Trainer Ben Jones, whose business for 40-odd years has been to know good jockeys, and who has watched .the best of them, says that Eddie Arcaro is the best he has seen since Carroll Shilling. Why? B.A. doesn't rightly know: "It's like playing a piano. Some have a better touch than others."

There is more to it than that. All the good ones, like good piano players, must also have rhythm. Says Arcaro: "You've got to make the horse think you're part of him. You sit right tight and dig your hands into his neck. And when he drives, you drive, and when he comes back you come back with him. That's the only secret I know about helping a horse, and it's no secret." He might have added that a great jockey, like any champion, must have guts.

Arcaro showed all these qualities one day last February at Santa Anita, aboard an iron-grey stallion named Talon. He was last going into the far turn, with 17 horses ahead of him. He whipped and drove the horse through holes that looked impassable. Then, with a spectacular finish, he won the $50,000 San Antonio Handicap. The next day, watching a newsreel of the race, Arcaro shivered at the chances he had taken.

He is a sly hand at diagnosing "trouble" horses. Seven years ago, Arcaro got an SOS call from Ben Jones in Louisville, four days before the Derby. Whirlaway had Ben worried; he wouldn't go around turns. The more other jockeys fought him, the more he drifted wide. Trouble-shooter Arcaro experimented in a workout; he took a long rein and let Whirlaway follow another horse around the turn. It worked so well that Whirlaway (Arcaro up) won the Derby by eight lengths in the fastest time it has ever been run.

This year Arcaro has won two of the four big $100,000 races run so far (the Santa Anita Handicap and the Derby). He doesn't shine as brilliantly in the cheap run-of-the-mill races, on which 26 million people do most of their betting. Says he: "Cheap horses don't need management--they just run."

Ten-Percenters. In 16 turbulent years Eddie Arcaro has ridden 11,868 races. He has won 2,223 of them. One reason why Eddie Arcaro is still at it (the average jockey lasts only four or five years) is that he seldom has to visit steam boxes to keep his weight down. Most jockeys resort to all the tricks, including taking cathartics, to lose weight, and sometimes lose their health as well.

Like a wealthy New York businessman,

Arcaro owns a home in the suburbs. It is a nine-room stone-&-stucco house on a dead-end street in Rockville Centre, L.I. --safe for his two kids, Carolyn, 6,/-and Bobby, 4. Arcaro, who has been living soft since he quit as contract jockey for the Greentree Stable 1 1/2 years ago, sleeps until 9 a.m. He used to get up at 6 a.m., like most jockeys. Now a free lancer, he eats a leisurely breakfast, and at 11:30 a.m. hops into his Cadillac and drives to work.

At the track, he checks to see what mounts he has. Like every jockey, he has an agent to make his riding engagements. Arcaro's agent, Melvin ("Bones") La Boyne, has an easier time of it than most. Because it costs no more to hire the best jockey (a flat-rate $50 for a winning mount on big tracks,** $25 for a loser), trainers seek out Bones.

Agent La Boyne's office hours are from 8 a.m. until the last race is run, and he can usually take his pick of mounts. Because favorites obviously have a better chance of winning than long shots, Bones seldom books Arcaro to ride any 15-to-1 horses. Many bettors put their money on whatever horse Arcaro is riding, thus shortening the odds further still; his reputation helps make a lot of false favorites. Arcaro is an unsound betting proposition. Eddie himself used to bet on his horses, says he gave it up because "I don't think you can beat them things." His income is about $2,300 a week, minus $340 for valet and agent fees. (Says Eddie: "After taxes, it's just a livin'.")

After work, Arcaro goes home and sinks into a big easy chair, grabs the evening paper and turns to the racing page. He is unmistakably boss at home. His wife is two inches taller than he is, but Arcaro likes her to wear extra high heels because he says it makes a woman's legs look prettier. For a while, he was red-hot on airplanes, bought one, and learned to fly it. But he got over it, just as he also cooled off on previous enthusiasms for bridge, tennis and backyard barbecues. The only sports he has never tired of are fishing, golf (he plays in the low 80s) and horses.

The Year George Smith Won. Almost since the day he was born--the year a horse named George Smith won the Derby --Eddie Arcaro has been making his way against odds, which have shortened considerably through the years. First, it was his size. At Southgate, Ky., just across the river from Cincinnati, the other kids told him that he was too small to play baseball. At ten, as a caddy at the Highland Country Club, he took such a shine to the game that his father, Patsy Arcaro, the comfortably fixed proprietor of a china store, thought he had a golfer in the family. One of Eddie's best clients was Tom McCaffery, a crotchety race horse owner.

One day when Eddie was twelve, the principal of his school asked his mother whether Eddie was feeling better. Said his mother: "I didn't know he wasn't feeling well." Eddie had been playing hooky for 43 days, using his lunch money for carfare out to Latonia, to fool around the horses. His father read him the riot act and sent him back to school. Six months later his parents caught him driving back from the race track again in the family Packard.

That night there was a council of war in the Arcaro home. Ma was willing to let Eddie give horse racing a try; Pa was dead against it. Ma won. Eddie began to gallop horses for Tom McCaffery, who paid him $15 a week and swore he'd never make a jockey. Eddie used to cry over the belittling he got. At 15 he was in Agua Caliente, broke and homesick, when he finally won his first race, on a four-year-old maiden named Eagle Bird. Then he drove up to Tanforan, Calif., to take a job with Clarence Davison, a "gypsy" horseman who taught him the ABCs of being a jockey.

The Year Brokers Tip Won. It was a bard school. In morning workouts (young Eddie had the man-sized chore of galloping 15 horses every morning), Davison would never tell him simply to "breeze this horse a half mile with a nice snug hold." Instead, he would tell him to work the half in 50 seconds--and he meant neither one second more nor one second less. Eddie learned to have a clock in his head." In New Orleans in 1933--the year Brokers Tip won the Derby--a "bug boy"* named Arcaro began to get into print. He was top rider at the meeting, with 43 wins.

After a race, Davison would take Eddie aside to diagram his mistakes. He showed Arcaro how he lost distance by swinging wide to go around two horses on a turn; low he risked being run into the rail by trying to squeeze through on the inside of a front rider. He formulated it into a rule that Eddie still works by: "Never go outside of two or inside of one." Davison was insistent about never losing ground; it cost Arcaro one spill after another, trying to squeeze through between horses. The first bad tumble he had was from a plater named Gunfire at Chicago in 1933. "Don't let anybody tell you that a spill like that doesn't leave a rider jittery," says Arcaro. "I was gun shy for a long time."

Davison also taught Eddie a wrong thing or two: he believed in laying plenty of whip to a horse. Eddie now believes that too many riders lean too heavily on the whip. The trick, he says, is to use the least possible at the right time. Arcaro often just waves the stick before a horse's eye ("it kind of scares them").

His closest competitor today, thin-faced Ted Atkinson, 31, is known as The Slasher because of the way he flails the whip. Arcaro's only other serious rival is the West Coast's favorite Johnny Longden, who is 38. They all have slightly different styles. Longden, for example, is famed as a "whoop-te-do" rider: a jockey who likes to get out front and stay there. Atkinson rides with his stirrups even; Arcaro uses what is called the "ace deuce" technique, in which the right stirrup is about two inches higher than the left. Says Arcaro: "I don't agree with the idea of it myself, but it seems to suit me." About 75% of present-day jockeys ride that way.

Slowdown. The clock that keeps running in Arcaro's head really rang the bell four years ago in the Manhattan Handicap. Arcaro was on Devil Diver, a speed horse. Everybody, including the other jockeys, expected him to set a fast pace, and then collapse long before the mile and a half had been run. Arcaro knew how slow he was going; the others didn't and hung back too. The time for the first mile was incredibly slow. When Arcaro finally let Devil Diver run, he outsprinted the others, winning by 1 1/2 lengths.

Two years ago he stole another long race--the two-mile Jockey Club Gold Cup --exactly the same way. But he isn't always the best rider on every horse. One very good one that he can't ride is Stymie, greatest of the money-earners (with $823,560). He once rode Stymie, whom he says he doesn't "fit," admitted that he must have looked like Ned the Coachman coming down the stretch.

Arcaro's biggest failing used to be his temper. When he got mad during a race, he crashed flagrantly into other horses. He won a reputation as the roughest rider in the business.

One day in 1942, another rider rammed him right after the start of the Cowdin Stakes at Aqueduct. Arcaro saw red. He wheeled his horse out, cracked him with the whip and went after the offender. "I must have done that next eighth in 10 flat," he says. He caught up with the other jockey, Vincent Nodarse, and al most put him over the fence. The stewards called Arcaro up to the stand, asked him if he had done it on purpose, and expected the usual denial. Instead Arcaro blurted: "I'd of killed the son of a bitch if I could." He was suspended for a whole year, and decided to be a good boy. "You know," he says, "I don't even break my golf sticks on the golf course any more."

From Maine to Spain. In the past five years, there has been a marked change from the old roughrider days of Shilling (who used to grab hold of other horses' bridles) and the jockeys who were experts at leg-locking.* It was the moving picture camera that did it. At Jamaica six cameras now record every foot of every race. "It's foolish to try any rough stuff now," says Arcaro. He also gives a large share of credit to gentlemanly Jockey Ted Atkinson, who helped raise the standard of sportsmanship on New York tracks. "Guys will shut him off, but when he gets them in a bad spot later he never takes advantage of it. He kinda set a style."

One man who knows from experience how rough Eddie used to be is Ben-Jones, a pretty rough guy himself. Arcaro, riding for someone else, sometimes crashed horses that Jones was training. Says Eddie: "He's known from Maine to Spain as a tough man. He'd get mad, but he'd cool out." In 16 years, between feuds, Arcaro has ridden just three horses for Ben.

In 1938, he got a call from Jones in Louisville asking him to ride Lawrin, a 9-to-1 shot in the Kentucky Derby. "Not me," says Eddie. "I want no part of him." But Jones talked him into it, and Eddie got the biggest wallop of his life ("You only win your first Derby once"). The next time it was Whirlaway, and the Triple Crown. This February, the chances of Arcaro riding Citation for Ben Jones were about 100 to 1 against. Eddie, up on Assault, had crashed into Ben's pride & joy, Armed, in the Widener Handicap.

Then Jockey Al Snider, Citation's rider, went fishing off the Florida Keys and was drowned. Ben was on the lookout for a jockey to ride his wonder horse in the Derby. This time it was Eddie Arcaro who made the phone call. Al Snider had been one of Arcaro's best friends; his widow got a share of Eddie's Derby winnings.

Tough as he is Arcaro has a few soft spots. Any tout or hustler around the track can usually work Eddie for "a double sawbuck." His mother telephoned him one day to say that she had lost her apartment and had no place to live. He hurried to Cincinnati, and bought her a $16,000 house.

Another time, his ma said to him: "Gee whiz, Eddie, I could use a few dollars. Why don't you tell me how these races are coming out?" Said he: "If jockeys knew how races were coming out, Mom, they'd all be millionaires."

*One who was different was Earl Sande, idol of the '20s, who saved his money and bought race horses. This season he had hard luck: though he owns twelve horses he has won only one race so far. Last week, he was brought up before the racing stewards after a saliva test showed that his one winner had been given a caffeine stimu lant. He was suspended from racing for 60 days. /- Carolyn A., a filly named for her, won last week's $25,000 Firenze Handicap at Jamaica. ** Plus the usual tip, which is 10% of the purse. *Apprentice jockey. The name comes from the asterisk beside a horse's name on racing charts, indicating that an apprentice will ride. *Hooking a leg in front of another jockey's leg to keep him from forging ahead.

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