Cordero Wasn’t Ready for the Pressure of Reaching 6,000 Wins

At age 44, 6,000 victories, 27 years, dozens of broken bones and one intimate scrape with death into his career, Angel Cordero Jr. still straddles a racehorse like a wasp poised on a leaf.

Watching Cordero, day in and day out, is a study in stress -- a frontal assault upon the nervous system, like a movie chase scene that never ends. He is a kaleidoscope of barely controlled energy and emotion, an impish clown with a familiar, earthy charisma one minute, a volatile, raging, 5-3 bolt of Puerto Rican machismo the next. He is a tender, doting father; a fierce, intimidating adversary; a son so devoted that after winning the 6,000th race of his career at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J., Tuesday, he sent flowers to be placed on his father’s grave.

Little more than a year ago, Cordero returned to riding after having spent four painful months recovering from injuries -- lacerated liver, fractured leg, broken ribs -- suffered in a violent riding accident at Aqueduct in New York that almost ended his life but only interrupted his career.

A half-ton horse ran over his 112-pound body, and four months later he recounted the horror of feeling blood seeping into his stomach as he lay on the race track. He spoke of contemplating retirement. Then, he spoke of Saratoga and how important it was that he defend his long-standing reign over the rider standings at America’s oldest functioning race track.

On an emotional Sunday afternoon in mid-July last year, Cordero went 2 for 2 at Belmont Park, the second victory aboard an emerging young star, Gulch, and proclaimed himself ready for Saratoga. The horseplayers, who soon would boo and taunt him, cheered adoringly. Cordero was returning from the next world’s doorway just in time to pursue an 11th consecutive Saratoga riding title.

Of course, he won the Saratoga championship by three victories over Jose Santos, the young Chilean rider often referred to as the “next Cordero.” Riding with the verve and abandon of a man half his age, Cordero used that meeting as a staging area for a bicoastal autumn and a winter rash of stakes victories. Despite the lack of a serious Triple Crown contender beneath his whip, he has been astoundingly productive during the first half of 1987. He has ridden in perhaps the best form of his career. “I think as far as strategy and knowledge, I’ve become a better rider in the last four years,” he said.

In the first seven months of the season, in which he fought off a numbing slump to win his 6,000th race, Cordero has won stakes in California, Florida, Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey as well as New York. “Last year was bad for me healthwise. This year has been a good one from the beginning,” Cordero said last week, while in the midst of the slump that made his stretch drive toward 6,000 an exercise in patience. “This may be my best money year ever. But I’ll have even better ones in the future.”

The subject of retirement no longer is raised. Cordero, achieving milestones even when things are going less well than usual, has been on a mid-life roll. Lately, however, Cordero has begun to show the strain. So profound is his current New York slump -- he is 3 for 43 during the last eight days of racing at Belmont -- that while going 0 for 11 Monday and Wednesday he lost his lead in the meeting’s rider standings to Randy Romero.

“Because of the situation, we’ve ridden a lot of horses during the past week or so that we wouldn’t ordinarily ride,” said Cordero’s agent, Kevin Lyons. “I put him on some horses I probably shouldn’t have, just hoping to get lucky and win one or two races. This was kind of special because it comes late in his career. It was a little more meaningful. But his attitude through the whole thing was good. Every day is a new day, every race is a new race.

“The pressure came at the end. We never even really talked about it until we were four or five away, and then the pressure came when the media started showing up every day and waiting, the camera crews started following him around. His fans and friends -- everyone was waiting. The way it ended up, although we would have preferred to have won the 6,000th in New York, I’m glad it came in a stakes race and on horses that belong to a major client.”

The television crews and reporters began following him last week when it became mathematically possible for him to reach 6,000 with one big day.

The slump has taken strange twists. Cordero found himself in a speed duel with his entrymate in Saturday’s first race and returned, beaten at 1-5 odds, to a chorus of boos and catcalls from the Belmont crowd. In the final days his mounts were being overbet and, with each defeat, the frustrated fans’ volume of abuse increased. In response, Cordero appeared to be pressing. He manhandled unresponsive horses as only Cordero can manhandle a horse. Every horse he rode came back tired.

Cordero helicoptered to Delaware Park Saturday evening to ride Coup de Fusil in the Delaware Handicap and got his 5,998th winner, only to go 0 for 3 Sunday at Belmont. That evening, while celebrating the 25th anniversary of his first New York victory with friends, he choked on a piece of baked clam in a restaurant.

His fellow riders, meanwhile, were giving nothing away. They were making Cordero work hard on every horse he mounted. He rode a half-dozen horses at Belmont Monday, and none ever got a breather.

Cordero, dismounting his fifth losing mount of the afternoon, was tight-lipped and grim late Monday when it had become impossible to reach his goal that day at Belmont. “I’m not pressing,” he snapped when it was suggested that it appeared he was. “I would have loved to do it here. When it comes, it comes.”

On Tuesday at Monmouth, after sweeping both divisions of the Colleen Stakes aboard a pair of promising Wayne Lukas-trained 2-year-old fillies, Cordero brandished his whip and dismounted his 6,000th winner with his signature vertical leap from the irons, then took time to sign autographs as he walked out of the Monmouth Park winner’s circle. The comparatively subdued New Jersey crowd pressed against the fence. “The best that ever lived,” a shirtless bettor in a baseball cap screamed. “The best.”

Only three riders have won 6,000 -- Bill Shoemaker, Johnny Longden and Laffit Pincay.

“It means a lot,” he said. “My biggest thrills have been winning the (Kentucky) Derby, winning 11 titles at Saratoga, coming back from my injury last year and this. Maybe it will help get me into the Hall of Fame.”