The Pumper's Last Purse

The name of the horse was George Royal; he had won only one race this year. The name of the "boy" on his back was Johnny Longden, and that was enough to lower the odds on him to 6-1 as he left the gate in last week's San Juan Capistrano Handicap at Santa Anita.

Johnny Longden is quite a boy. He is 59 now, and a grandfather. His face is wrinkled, his hair is mostly gone and his back aches--as might be expected when a man standing 4 ft. 10 in. and weighing 110 Ibs. has fallen off enough horses to break both arms, both collarbones, both legs (one of them five times), both feet, two vertebrae and most of his ribs. To the fans, Longden is known as "The Pumper" (for his style of riding) and "The Fox." He is the jockey who rode Count Fleet to a Triple Crown in 1943, who drove Noor to four straight upset victories over the great Citation in 1950, and who by last week had won 6,032 races--692 more than any jockey who ever lived.

Longden's last ride came to a classic happy ending. First time past the grandstand in the 1 3/4-mi. race, George Royal was running dead last. But The Pumper went to work. Looping the field on the final turn, he whipped George Royal into the lead, kept him there to win by a nose. The victory was worth $75,000 to George Royal's owner and $7,500 to Longden. But it was Johnny's last purse as a jockey. "I'm hanging up my tack," he announced. And so ended 44 years of riding horses for money, a career that began with county-fair trick riding in Canada and made Longden a millionaire. The mounts he rode earned their owners a grand total of $24,665,800. Not that retirement will make much difference in Longden's daily routine. He is taking a job as a trainer so that he can still get up each morning at 5 to watch the ponies work out.

Another race-track millionaire retired last week: a four-legged one. In seven years, from 1959 to 1966, Mrs. Richard C. du Pont's Kelso won 39 races and $1,977,896, was named U.S. Horse of the Year five times. Last week the nine-year-old gelding was training for still another campaign in Florida when doctors X-rayed a suspicious sore spot on his ankle and discovered a hairline fracture. Kelso, No. 1 moneywinner in the history of thoroughbred racing, was sent to pasture.

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