Horse Racing : ‘Healing’ Terry Lipham Considers New Career as Jockey Agent

A year ago Friday, one of the most frightening spills in the history of Santa Anita sent five horses and their jockeys flying all over the track.

Laffit Pincay looked like a man who had been shot out of a circus cannon. He was thrown forward by his stumbling horse and landed, helmet first, on Chris McCarron, who had already been dumped and was lying on the track.

Only two horses finished the race. Encolure, whose breakdown started the chain reaction, was destroyed. McCarron, who was sidelined for five months, still limps and has a foot-long, eight-ounce steel plate in his upper left leg.

But at least McCarron and three of the other jockeys--Pincay, Gary Stevens and Rafael Meza--are still riding. Terry Lipham wasn’t that fortunate.

Lipham, who in 1985 was trampled by three horses at Del Mar, was trampled by two at Santa Anita. He underwent emergency surgery the night of Oct. 16, 1986, and had his spleen removed. He also suffered a punctured lung and cracked ribs.

He has not ridden since, nor is he expected to.

Last week, however, Lipham, who will be 43 next month, was seen at trainer Wayne Lukas’ barn at Santa Anita, talking about work of another sort.

Asked what he had been doing lately, Lipham said: “Healing.”

Because he never lost consciousness, Lipham’s recollections of the spill are vivid.

“I know Chris and I got hurt the worst,” he said. “But the guys who were the luckiest were Stevens and Meza. Man, they were lucky. I saw horses almost land on them, missing them by six inches. Six inches the other way and it would have been all over.”

Lipham mentions training as a new career, but he talks more about the possibility of becoming a jockey agent.

“To make it as a trainer, you’ve got to have at least one big-money man,” Lipham said. “I’ve got some people lined up who would be good owners, but none of them has the big money.

“Jockey agents (who earn 25% of what their riders make) can make a nice living. On this circuit, if you wind up with a jockey in the top five in the standings, you can make an extremely good living. If you have somebody in the second five, you can do all right, too.

“All an agent needs is a pen and a pair of tennis shoes. Yeah, you also need a condition book (a periodic list of a track’s races), but they give you that.”

The Breeders’ Cup, faced with a lack of box-office horses and stiff college football competition on television--probably including the annual UCLA-USC grudge match--has gotten two breaks in recent weeks.

Trempolino, winner of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, will run in the $2-million Breeders’ Cup Turf Stakes at Hollywood Park Nov. 21, and with the loss by Java Gold in the Jockey Club Gold Cup last Saturday at Belmont Park, the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic will have definite Horse of the Year implications.

Many Eastern voters would have conceded Horse of the Year to Java Gold had he not been beaten by Creme Fraiche in the Gold Cup. Now, with Java Gold injured and out for the year, Alysheba or Ferdinand could win the honor with a victory in the Classic.

That would be a first for the Breeders’ Cup. Even though Wild Again, Proud Truth and Skywalker won the first three runnings of the Classic, none of them was voted Horse of the Year.

The season starting Friday night at Los Alamitos will be highlighted by the running of two traditional major races, plus the introduction of the seven-race Quarter Horse Breeders Classics Nov. 7.

The Classics, patterned after the Breeders’ Cup races for thoroughbreds, will be worth an estimated $375,000, including the $125,000 Championship Classic for 3-year-olds and up and the $100,000 Juvenile Classic for 2-year-olds.

Other stakes on the program are the Sprint, the Freshman, the Sophomore, the Marathon and the Distaff.

The $200,000 Champion of Champions will be run Dec. 5 at Los Alamitos, and the Golden State Futurity, which was worth $746,000 last year, is scheduled Dec. 12.

Los Alamitos will run Tuesday through Saturday, with a first post of 7:30 p.m. The season ends Dec. 19.

Los Alamitos’ races will be televised for betting to nine fair sites in Northern California. Later in the season, Los Alamitos hopes to have television betting locations in Del Mar, San Bernardino and Ventura.

Horse Racing Notes

Very Subtle, the 3-year-old filly who was sold for $1.2 million Tuesday, was bought as a yearling for $30,000 by trainer Mel Stute. . . . Laffit Pincay’s victory aboard Creme Fraiche in the Jockey Club Gold Cup was his seventh in a race worth $1 million or more. He has won three Breeders’ Cup races--with Tasso, Capote and Skywalker--plus the Budweiser-Arlington Million with Perrault, the Jersey Derby with Spend a Buck and the Santa Anita Handicap with Greinton. No other jockey has won more than three $1-million races. . . . Broad Brush, who won this year’s Santa Anita Handicap, has been retired and will stand at stud at Gainesway Farm in Kentucky. . . . Also headed to Gainesway, after he runs in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, is Arc de Triomphe winner Trempolino. . . . Seattle Dancer, the colt who set a world record when Robert Sangster’s syndicate bought him as a yearling at Keeneland for $13.1 million in 1985, has been retired. Seattle Dancer couldn’t race as a 2-year-old because of a virus and won two races this year before finishing off the board in the French Derby.