Even After the Derby, Cordero Continues to Move at Fast Pace

After making a quick trip to the winner’s circle, Spend A Buck’s jockey, Angel Cordero, rushed to the jockey’s room and began hurriedly changing out of his silks and into a suit.

He checked his watch. It was 6:10 p.m. He had a plane to catch in half an hour.

“Hurry, hurry,” he said to his traveling companion. “But don’t drop any roses. It’ll cost you $100 for every rose you lose.”

It was the second fastest Cordero had moved all day.

The fastest was aboard Spend A Buck, who had the third fastest time in the 111-year history of the Kentucky Derby.

It was Cordero’s third victory in the Kentucky Derby. He won in 1974 on Cannonade and in 1976 on Bold Forbes.

Asked which was the sweetest, he said: “They’re all good ones--the first because it’s the first one, the second because it was (for an owner) from my country (Puerto Rico), and this one because you never know when it will be your last one.”

Asked if he is considering retirement, Cordero, 42, said, “Maybe.”

But he didn’t seem to know when to give it up Saturday. After his wire-to-wire victory in the Derby, he was scheduled to return to Garden State Park in Cherry Hill, N.J., to ride a 10-1 shot Saturday night.

He was counting on a smoother trip than the one he had coming here from Garden State Friday night, when on the way to the airport, he was pulled over by a policeman for speeding. Then, it was discovered that his registration had expired.

“He lectured me for an hour,” Cordero said, perhaps exaggerating.

He also gave Cordero a ticket.

Upon arriving at the airport behind schedule, Cordero learned that the plane he had chartered for the trip to Louisville was a single-engine.

It took him more than three hours to fly here.

Spend A Buck’s trainer, Cam Gambolati, went to the airport at 8:15 to meet Cordero, who didn’t arrive until after midnight.

He didn’t know it then, but all of his troubles were behind him.

Spend A Buck took the lead out of the gate and never gave it up, winning by 5 lengths.

Asked if that was the plan Gambolati had devised for him, Cordero said: “He told me to use my own judgment.”

Gambolati said as much.

“I knew that Angel knew the horse,” he said. “He got him steady and relaxed. They work like a great team.”

Cordero has been Spend A Buck’s rider in all six of the colt’s races since last October.

Considering Cordero’s reputation for speaking his mind, that is an achievement in itself.

Before his first race on Spend A Buck in the Young America at the Meadowlands, Cordero recommended that blinders be put on the colt because Spend A Buck seemed easily excited. His suggestion was ignored. When Spend A Buck finished second by three-quarters of a length, Cordero was offended because owner Dennis Diaz seemed to be taking the loss so well.

Storming into a party thrown by Diaz, Cordero said: “If you’d listened to me, the horse would have won.”

Instead of being insulted, Diaz was even more certain afterward that Cordero was the right jockey for the horse.

In five subsequent starts, Spend A Buck has finished first three times and third twice.

Some of the other jockeys seemed envious of Cordero because he obviously had the best horse Saturday.

“He dragged Angel to the front,” said Chris McCarron, who rode Fast Account to a fourth-place finish.

But Cordero said it wasn’t as easy as it looked.

Even though the horse looked relaxed in the post parade, Cordero said he knew Spend A Buck was nervous when they crossed under the wire above the finish line at the start of the race.

“He jumped the first time we went under the wire and at everything else he saw on the track, shadows, footprints and everything,” Cordero said. “I had to spank him at the last turn because he was playing too many games.”

That’s when it first hit him, he said, that he was going to win going away.

“I couldn’t believe he was so far in front,” he said. “I thought somebody was hiding right behind him.”

It might have been a different race if the other speed horse, Eternal Prince, had been able to challenge Spend A Buck at the outset. The other jockeys were hoping that Spend A Buck and Eternal Prince would burn each other out, leaving the race to one of the closers.

But Eternal Prince’s jockey, Richard Migliore, said the colt was enjoying the spectacle of the bands and fans in the infield and didn’t pay attention to the job at hand until it was too late.

Eternal Prince’s attention might also have been diverted when Stephan’s Odyssey bit him at the start.

Cordero said that Eternal Prince couldn’t have challenged his horse anyway, not on this afternoon.

But he stopped short of calling Spend A Buck a super horse.

“There’s no such thing as a super horse until the day he retires,” Cordero said. “Until then, they’re all able to get beat. But he was good enough for me.”

Cordero then rushed toward the door, stopping to pick up a rose that his companion had dropped.

He said he was going to place the roses on his father’s grave in Queensboro, N.Y.

“It was his dream to see me win the Derby,” Cordero said. “He died in November of 1973, the year before I won my first one, but maybe, somewhere, he’s watching.”

Then Cordero left. He never did make it to Garden State Park in time for Saturday night’s race. The plane was late.