Shoemaker’s Charge to Victory Is Jockey’s Eighth in Gold Cup

As you enter the jockeys’ room at Hollywood Park, a painting on the wall just to the left of the entrance catches your eye.

Entitled “The Dodgers You Never See,” the unsigned watercolor, done in shades of brown and white, shows nine figures in various stages of undress staring intently at a television screen. On the screen, a horse race is in progress.

The tongue-in-cheek idea, of course, is that the Dodgers--and, by extension, all ballplayers--are not that fired up about baseball, that it is racing that really holds their interest.

“That’s the way it is,” one visitor to the jockeys’ room said Sunday afternoon shortly after Bill Shoemaker and Ferdinand had run away with the $500,000 Hollywood Gold Cup. “I know, I used to have quite a book (taking bets from ballplayers) in the clubhouse.”

Considering the way the Dodgers have been playing of late, the only race they’re likely to be involved in this season will be at the track. And Sunday’s feature in front of 43,308 at Hollywood Park would certainly have kept them glued to the television.

Ferdinand, expertly rated, convincingly disposed of the other 10 starters to give Shoemaker and trainer Charlie Whittingham their eighth Gold Cup triumph. In doing so, the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner also dispelled those unkind suggestions that he is not the horse he was a year ago.

The race was not without its moment of controversy, however. Pat Valenzuela, who finished eighth aboard Stop The Fighting, angrily confronted Shoemaker when the winner entered the jockeys’ room, accusing him of some overly vigorous riding. Shoemaker responded in equally curt fashion.

“C’mon, pal. I got through, didn’t I?” he said.

Asked the reason for his unhappiness, Valenzuela pointed to an incident that occured as the field entered the far turn and he was forced to momentarily check Stop The Fighting.

“I was sitting there second and he (Shoemaker) just pushed me right over the other horse’s heels,” Valenzuela said. “If it had been me, if I’d done that to Ferdinand, there would have been an inquiry and everything else.”

Shoemaker explained it this way: “My horse came in a little bit and the horse in front (Judge Angelucci) came out and he (Valenzuela) got caught and squeezed at the 3/8-pole. But he (Stop The Fighting) wasn’t running good enough. If he’d have been running good, he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.”

Later, after watching the replay, the two jockeys made up.

“Sorry, pal,” Shoemaker said.

“No problem,” replied Valenzuela. “Congratulations.”

Back at his locker, surrounded by a dozen or so sportswriters and a couple of television crews, Shoemaker fielded the usual questions, his normal good humor once again in evidence.

“He ran good,” Shoemaker said. “Any time you win, your horse has run good. He was full of run most of the way.”

Ferdinand, who finished a disappointing fourth three weeks ago in the Californian, which Judge Angelucci won, looked much sharper Sunday.

“After his last race, he had two real good works that made me feel like he was going to run a big race today,” Shoemaker said. “In fact, he worked just like he did before he won the Kentucky Derby.

“He’s got a lot of ability. It’s just the idea of trying to get it out of him. He’s probably always going to be that way, one of those loafing kind of horses that doesn’t always do his best. When he was very young I knew that he was that way but I figured he’d grow out of it when he got older. But he hasn’t grown out of it yet.

“He’s not a generous horse that gives you all he’s got. He’s always got a little something left.”

Another distracting habit that the chestnut colt has is to prick his ears when he takes the lead, as if to say, ‘OK, that’s it, I’ve won.’ He did so again on Sunday nearing the sixteenth pole.

“When I saw that, I said, ‘Maybe I’ll come back and nail that sucker,’ ” joked Gary Baze, who, aboard Judge Angelucci, finished in a dead heat for second with Chris McCarron on a fast-closing Tasso.

Shoemaker, too, is not crazy about his horse’s habit of pricking it’s ears so far short of the wire.

“Yeah, it bothers me, but there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about it,” he said. “He’s not an easy horse to ride.”

And then Shoemaker was off, headed for the shower. Once again, for the 25th time, his name would be entered in the Gold Cup record book. For the eighth time, it would be entered alongside the name of the winner.

Shoemaker, who finished third aboard Be Fleet in his first Gold Cup in 1951, has won the race aboard Swaps (1956), Round Table (1957), Gallant Man (1958), Ack Ack (1971), Kennedy Road (1973), Tree of Knowledge (1974) and Exceller (1978).

Now, Ferdinand joins that august company.