THE YEAR OF THE OLD SPORT : IN THE BIG RACE THE SHOE STILL FITS : Bill Shoemaker, at 54, Becomes the Oldest Jockey to Win the Kentucky Derby

If somebody had been out of the country for about a dozen years, then turned up on a Sunday afternoon this fall at Santa Anita, he might have wondered whether time was on a treadmill.

This was no mirage. There in the winner’s circle were trainer Meshach (Mesh) Tenney and jockey Bill Shoemaker, celebrating a win for a horse owned by Rex Ellsworth.

Mesh Tenney has turned 79 since that day. Bill Shoemaker is 55. And Ellsworth is also 79. The only thing that would have made the Santa Anita tableau completely cuckoo was if the horse had been Swaps.

Even the Twilight Zone has its limits. Swaps, who won the 1955 Kentucky Derby for Ellsworth, Tenney and Shoemaker, died in 1972. The others live on--competing, winning--and while Tenney retired for 12 years before returning to the track in 1985, Shoemaker’s extraordinary career has been uninterrupted except for injuries.

It is a career that has waned and appeared to be over several times. In 1968, Shoemaker suffered a fractured right thigh bone at Santa Anita and was sidelined for 13 months. Shortly after returning in 1969--the week before he was to ride Arts and Letters in the Kentucky Derby--Shoemaker was crushed by a horse at Hollywood Park, suffering bladder damage and a fractured pelvis.

In 1985, injuries had little to do with the fact that Shoemaker rode only 80 winners, the lowest total for a complete year since he started riding in 1949. He won with just 11% of his mounts, which was half of his lifetime average, and it became more difficult for Harry Silbert--Shoemaker’s agent--to find trainers who would ride him on their best horses.

Before this year, Shoemaker had never considered retiring. “Those two times I got hurt,” he said, “I realized that I missed riding all the more when I couldn’t do it.”

Because more than a fourth of those 80 wins in 1985 had come in stakes races, Shoemaker personally earned approximately $450,000. Last March, however, he was beginning to have doubts. In an interview, he hinted about retiring after 1986, perhaps to try training as Johnny Longden did, and friends said that if Shoemaker even mentioned retiring, he probably meant it.

But then along came Ferdinand.

A good-looking, well-bred son of Nijinsky II and Banja Luka--and a grandson of Northern Dancer--Ferdinand might have been the reason Shoemaker even stayed around for 1986.

Charlie Whittingham first introduced Shoemaker to Ferdinand one morning at Del Mar in the summer of 1985. Whittingham, a trainer whose immensely successful career has been forged from a patience with young horses, was uncharacteristically excited about Ferdinand as a Kentucky Derby prospect and he told Shoemaker that he would have the chance to ride him.

Shoemaker had won three Derbys--with Swaps, Tomy Lee and Lucky Debonair--but the last was in 1965 and in recent years he had seldom gone to Churchill Downs with a horse that inspired confidence.

Shoemaker had ridden Ferdinand in all of his races as a 3-year-old--a second in the Los Feliz Stakes at Santa Anita, a win in the Santa Catalina, a second in the San Rafael and a third in the Santa Anita Derby, in which a slick track hurt the chestnut horse’s chances.

Ferdinand would go off at 17-1 in the Derby, but Whittingham and Shoemaker knew that their chances were better than that. Whittingham had two unsuccessful tries at winning the Derby, in 1958 and 1960, and after Divine Comedy struggled home ninth in 1960, he told himself that he’d never return unless he had a good chance to win.

Before every Derby, there is speculation whether it will be a “jockeys’ race”--a race that could turn on the patience, cunning and courage of a rider, rather than simply being won by the best horse. The 1986 Derby qualified as a jockeys’ race more than any in recent years.

The 1986 Derby tested virtually every jockey in the race. Groovy, an excellent sprinter, ran the first part as though the final distance was going to be six furlongs instead of 1 miles, and finished last after leading for three-quarters of a mile. The horses that tried to run with Groovy, including favored Snow Chief, were also at the rear when the race ended.

Because Ferdinand is not a speed horse, the pace factor was not a consideration for Shoemaker, but position was. The start in the 16-horse field was untoward for several runners--Badger Land, the second betting choice, was almost knocked down leaving the gate.

Ferdinand and Shoemaker were breaking from the No. 1 post position, which hadn’t produced a Derby winner in 23 years. In the long run to the first turn, the crowding from the outside squeezed Ferdinand back to last place, but Shoemaker, whose patience on the track matches Whittingham’s off it, was in no hurry, anyway.

“I just dropped him back and took my time,” Shoemaker said.

Going down the backstretch, Groovy’s suicidal early fractions began to eliminate horses and Shoemaker got Ferdinand to start picking up the pace. On the last turn, they were now off the rail, with only a handful of horses in front of them.

The trouble was, at the top of the stretch, those horses were fanned across the track. Shoemaker had to make a choice between trying to go inside and taking the wide route, and now he says that his decision probably determined the race.

Sensing that the horses on the inside were tiring, Shoemaker split horses in getting through a hole that Rampage couldn’t negotiate. Pat Day, who rode Rampage, said later that if he could have made that hole a split second faster than Shoemaker, his colt would have won the race.

After Ferdinand zigged and Rampage was forced to zag, the rest was easy. Ferdinand’s margin was 2 lengths over Bold Arrangement, and Shoemaker, at 54 (and about three months short of his 55th birthday), easily became the oldest rider to ever win a Derby. The oldest before him was Angel Cordero, who at 42 rode Spend a Buck to victory in 1985.

In the week leading up to the Derby, Shoemaker had fantisized about an old-timer like him winning the race, his inspiration being the sight of Jack Nicklaus capturing another Masters title a few weeks before. “If Nicklaus can win the Masters, why can’t I win another Derby?” Shoemaker said on the Wednesday of Derby week.

After the Derby, Shoemaker began getting heavy mail from men who were listing their ages.

“There were a lot of letters from guys 50 and older,” Shoemaker said. “They wrote to say how I had moved up their life and helped their action a lot. I guess they could all relate to what I did.”

Ferdinand’s Derby was a launching pad for Shoemaker this year. In November, Shoemaker won a division of another Derby--the one at Hollywood Park--with Thrill Show, also a Whittingham trainee. By Dec. 14, Shoemaker had won 25 stakes races and his purse total was $6.8 million, which placed him seventh nationally. Shoemaker reached that total by riding in only 679 races, about half as many mounts as five of the six jockeys ahead of him. Shoemaker was averaging more than $10,000 in purse money per mount, which is an incredible figure.

Shoemaker remembers that conversation about possible retirement last March.

“Funny, isn’t it, now I’ve had one of my best years,” he said recently. “Charlie (Whittingham) has helped a lot. He’s put me on a lot of good horses.”

Whittingham, who at 73 can appreciate the needs of a senior citizen, was also there after Shoemaker came off those serious injuries in 1968-69, immediately putting him on live horses when he returned. But the door to Whittingham’s office swings both ways: He replaced Shoemaker with Fernando Toro this year when he felt that Toro might help Estrapade, the stakes-winning grass mare, regain her winning form.

Mel Stute, the trainer for Snow Chief, said after the Kentucky Derby that he thought Shoemaker might ride until he’s 70.

“He’s never had a weight problem (it would be a major headline if Shoemaker ever reached 100 pounds) and he’s a top athlete,” Whittingham said. “Try to beat him at golf or tennis and see what happens.”

And, another friend of Shoemaker’s says, he takes defeat with equanimity. Shoemaker learned long ago that even the good jockeys lose four out of every five races they ride.

“It looks like I’m going to be at it another year,” Shoemaker said the other day. “Another year at least.”

On Dec. 14, Shoemaker was aboard the winner of the Hollywood Futurity, Temperate Sil--a promising colt that Whittingham will be pointing toward the Triple Crown races in 1987. That Kentucky Derby record--oldest jockey to ever win the race--could be in immediate jeopardy.