Shoe’s Dilemma : Should He Ride Lord at War or Greinton in Big ‘Cap?

If you think it’s tough picking the right horse, consider squeezing into Bill Shoemaker’s boots this week.

He has his choice of two of trainer Charlie Whittingham’s three entries in Sunday’s Santa Anita Handicap.

The problem really isn’t whether Shoemaker would look better in Greinton’s red and white silks, or the green and white ensemble of Wimborne Farm’s Lord At War--although that’s no small consideration since Shoemaker’s presence might be requested afterward in the winner’s circle, where a guy wants to look his best.

Shoemaker has a habit of showing up there after a Big ‘Cap. He has won the race 10 times.

Shoemaker had until this morning, when entries were due, to make up his mind. He has wrestled with these decisions several times during his 36-year career, but, he said, “This is probably the toughest one.”

Shoemaker has won four straight stakes on Lord At War since October--but Whittingham is a part-owner of Greinton.

“They’re both good horses,” Shoemaker said. “It’s hard to choose between ‘em because they’ve never run against each other, although Lord At War has been good to me.”

But so has Whittingham, the 71-year-old trainer. He has saddled 95 stakes winners for Shoemaker at Santa Anita alone, three in the Big ‘Cap.

“Charlie’s done a lot for me,” Shoemaker said. “There are a lot of factors involved here. It’s not an easy decision to make, but I have to make it. I can’t ride ‘em both.”

Most jockeys would welcome Shoemaker’s problem--having to pick between two potential winners in a major race. He has been down that road before, though, and he hasn’t always picked the right horse.

“It’s been about 50-50,” he said. “I’ve chosen the wrong one a couple of times.”

In 1964, for instance, he chose to ride Hill Rise instead of Northern Dancer in the Kentucky Derby. Northern Dancer won.

“I rode Northern Dancer and won the Florida Derby on him, but he really didn’t impress me as being a real good horse that day,” Shoemaker said. “So I took the other horse, and he beat me a neck.”

In the 1971 Santa Anita Handicap, Shoemaker chose Ack Ack over Cougar II. He won the race but lost an employer for a while. Cougar II’s owner, Mary Jones Bradley, was so upset that she vowed Shoemaker would never ride for her again.

Afterward, a newspaper headline read: “Florsheim Heiress Gives Shoe the Boot.”

Said Shoemaker: “I just felt that Ack Ack was a better horse, and he proved it. He won the race. She did take me off Cougar in the (Hollywood) Gold Cup, but I rode one of Charlie’s other horses and he won.”

Sometimes loyalty takes precedence over the wisest choice. Shoemaker’s longtime agent, Harry Silbert, recalled the 1978 Santa Anita Handicap.

“I was on a horse for Charlie Whittingham and they wanted me to ride Vigors,” Silbert said, employing the first-person reference peculiar to jockeys’ agents and fight managers. “I just stayed with Charlie.”

Then Whittingham’s horse was scratched, Shoemaker sat out the race, and Darrel McHargue rode Vigors to victory.

Once, aboard Tomy Lee in the 1959 Kentucky Derby, Shoemaker thought he was on the wrong horse and still won.

“I wanted to ride Sword Dancer. That’s the horse I thought would win it. But Harry said, ‘We can’t. I already gave my word (to owner Fred Purner) that if Tomy Lee won the Bluegrass we’d ride him in the Derby.’ ” All of that background didn’t seem to help Shoemaker make his decision between Greinton and Lord At War.

“Either one of ‘em are not hard to ride,” Whittingham said. “It doesn’t matter to me which one he rides. It’s not hard when you’ve got (Chris) McCarron, so we’re not in too bad a position.”

McCarron will ride whichever horse Shoemaker doesn’t. He is the meeting’s leading rider and has won 615 races at Santa Anita, including 56 stakes, but has never won a Santa Anita Handicap.

It may be a difficult choice for the bettors, too. Whittingham’s three horses--he also will saddle Hail Bold King--are not running as an entry. The trainer may be the only one who can’t lose.

Shoemaker started riding for Whittingham in the 1950s. The trainer retains a singular first impression.

“He was very small,” Whittingham said. “He used to come out when (Eddie) Arcaro was doing most of our riding.

“Arcaro was having to fight weight all the time. Most of them do. (Shoemaker) has never had to fight weight. That’s probably why he’s lasted so long. His coordination is still good. He’s just a natural lightweight and he’s a good athlete with it. He plays golf well, plays tennis well.”

Shoemaker, 53, is still a remarkable physical specimen in miniature--4 feet 11 inches of bone, muscle and sinew. He figures that in 36 years, his weight has increased “four or five pounds, I guess. I’d have to get on the scale and see.”

These days, though, Shoemaker limits his rides. “Four, five or six (a day) are about right,” he said.

Most of his peers have retired, weary of the daily grind of trying to make weight in the sweat box. Shoemaker may miss Don Pierce the most.

“We’ve just about run out of pinochle players,” he said. “I don’t know what the young guys play.”

A track joke is that Shoemaker continues riding just to keep Silbert in business. Silbert, soon to be 74, is the only agent Shoemaker has ever had. Their enduring association is rare in racing.

“There’s nobody ever had anybody 36 years,” Silbert said. “He trusts me, and his temperament is good. So is mine. He works hard and I work hard.

“Oh, he’s complained. All jocks complain. They’re not all good horses, you know.

“All I did for the 36 years I’ve been with him, I get the horses to put him on, and he does the riding. I don’t tell him, and he don’t tell me, unless he wants to say, ‘I just don’t like this horse.’

“He might have raised his voice a few times. I just looked at him and laughed.

“A friend of mine had a horse that I had Bill riding all the time. I rode him six or seven times and the horse would run fifth, fourth, seventh. He says, ‘Do you know anything about this horse that I should know?’ And that was the end of that. I didn’t ride him no more.”

Shoemaker, whose family moved from Fabens, Tex., to La Puente when he was 10, was 17 and working horses for trainer George Reeves when Silbert came along.

“George saw a lot in him,” Silbert said. “He would get on horses that other exercise boys couldn’t handle and they would do great with him. His temperament, his hands--he was just great.”

“(Reeves) got Harry to take my book,” Shoemaker said. “I was just a kid. I really didn’t even know what he did, why he was necessary. But I liked him right away.

“It was like a father-son thing in the beginning. I lived with him and his family in Del Mar for a year or two. I was like one of the family.

“In the early days he was a big influence on me . . . made me do things I probably wouldn’t have done without him. He made me go to Caliente and ride 12 races a day on Sundays, ‘because you gotta learn how to ride, and the more you ride, the better you’re gonna be.’ I became a better rider from it.”

Said Silbert: “When he first started, he was letting all the jocks take advantage of him. I thought I’d straighten that out.”

Riding at the old Caliente track at Tijuana sometimes was closer to rodeo than horse racing, Silbert said. “You had to take care of yourself, and he learned that. After the fifth or sixth Sunday he says, ‘You think I’ve had enough?’ I says, ‘Yeah, you’ve had enough.’ He was tickled to death to get the hell out of there.”

The long association hasn’t been a continual canter to the winner’s circle, however.

“We’ve been through some slumps at different times,” Shoemaker said. “Mine, mostly.”

In the mid-’70s, when Shoemaker’s second marriage was breaking up, he seriously considered retiring.

“He was close,” Silbert said. “We talked about it, and I told him, ‘You have to go on. You have to straighten out your marital problems and go on from there.’ He married Cindy, they had a baby and that changed his whole life.”

“Something wouldn’t let me (retire),” Shoemaker said.

Last Monday, one of his two days off, he was at the track at dawn to work horses. But he wouldn’t want anyone to think he’s an eager kid again.

“I wake up every morning at 6, 6:30, anyway, so I might as well get up and do something,” he said.

But he admitted: “I like the competition, the riding, the horses, the life style.”

Whittingham, asked how long Shoemaker can go on, said: “Just as long as he can breathe, I guess. (Johnny) Longden rode until he was 60 and won the last race he rode, and Longden had to fight weight more than Shoe has.”

Shoemaker will continue riding for Whittingham.

“He brings ‘em up for the races properly and makes ‘em last two or three years, which a lot of guys don’t do,” Shoemaker said of the trainer. “He’s a master at that.

“He never gave you a lot of orders. He says, ‘You know how to ride him. Ride your race. And win.’ ”

Shoemaker pays attention to his ongoing records.

Wins?

“It’s more than 8,000,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what it is.”

He is shown the numbers: 8,442 wins and $99,870,898 in purses.

“Is that what it is?” he asked, politely interested. “Hmm. When I had 90 million, I never thought I’d ever reach a hundred million. Didn’t think I’d last that long.”