A 4-Winner Day Gives McCarron Dollar Derby

Chris McCarron rode four horses to victory Monday at Santa Anita, including Reigning Countess in the $60,000 La Centinela Stakes, to clinch the national money-winning championship in a battle with New York jockey Angel Cordero that went down to the last day.

McCarron’s four winners, plus a second and a third, gave him $73,000 in purses for the day and a total of $12,045,813 for the year. McCarron, who had won the money title in both 1980 and ‘81, became the first jockey to go over the $12-million mark.

Jockeys ordinarily receive about 10% of the purses their mounts win.

Cordero, riding at Aqueduct, trailed McCarron by $41,000 going into the last day. Cordero won only one race--finishing second in the stake for the third straight day--and managed $28,000 in purses.

But even though McCarron had a $13,000 edge before the Santa Anita program started (Aqueduct’s program had ended), he still needed a few winners to play it safe, because $38,800 of his total is in dispute. A victory by McCarron in November at Oak Tree has been rescinded by the stewards, who ruled that the horse was ineligible to start, and unless the California Horse Racing Board upholds a protest by the horse’s owner, the purse money will eventually be subtracted from McCarron’s total.

Cordero, winner of the money title the last two years and three times overall, finished $84,195 (including the disputed purse) behind McCarron with a total of $11,961,618.

Besides his win with Reigning Countess, McCarron also scored Monday with Amanotherbrother in the first race, Larry N Garry in the third and Bare Minimum in the fifth.

“This is a satisfying achievement,” McCarron said. “But my biggest achievement is still those first two years I started riding, when I rode over 1,000 winners.”

McCarron won 546 races in 1974, a record that still stands, and rode 468 in ’75.

“With purse money going up so much,” McCarron said, “I’m sure the record I set this year won’t stay on the books that long.”