THE $126-MILLION MAN : Breeders Cup : Why Pincay’s Saturday Card Is Full

The newspaper ad plugging Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup at Hollywood Park pictured jockey Laffit Pincay and read: “No matter how much you’ve won, there’s no thrill like winning the Breeders’ Cup.”

How much has Pincay won?

The ad identified him as “The 110-million-dollar man,” proving again how hard it is to keep up with Pincay--on the track and at the bank.

Overcoming the trauma of his wife’s suicide in 1985 and a career-long dietary battle that once had him convinced he would be dead or retired before he was 40, the 41-year-old Pincay passed $110 million in purse winnings more than a year ago.

His ledger shows a single-season earnings record of $13.4 million in 1985, a 1987 total of $9.7 million that is second only to Angel Cordero and a career total of $126 million, No. 1 on the all-time list and still soaring.

Pincay has a full book of nine rides Saturday, including the seven Breeders’ Cup races, each valued at $1 million or more.

Put Pincay in a million-dollar race and it’s magic.

There have been 39 such thoroughbred races held in the United States, starting with the 1981 Arlington Million. Pincay has won seven. No other American jockey has won more than three.

Pincay’s magnificent seven include:

--The 1982 Arlington Million with Perrault.

--The 1985 Jersey Derby with Spend a Buck, bonus provisions providing Pincay with 10% of $2.6 million, a single-race record.

--The 1985 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with Tasso.

--The 1986 Santa Anita Handicap with Greinton.

--The 1986 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with Capote.

--The ’86 Breeders’ Cup Classic with Skywalker, Pincay’s mount in Saturday’s $3-million Classic.

--The 1987 Jockey Club Gold Cup with Creme Fraiche.

Jimmy Kilroe, Santa Anita’s vice president of racing, once described Pincay as having “the strength of (Eddie) Arcaro, the judgment of (Bill) Shoemaker, the determination of (Johnny) Longden and the coolness of (George) Woolf.”

He left out the touch of Midas, which Pincay honed twice recently in Maryland:

--On Sept. 19, Pimlico staged the Maryland Million, with eight races of $100,000 or more. Pincay won three and was second in two others.

--On Oct. 31, at Laurel, Pincay rode La Glorioux to victory in the $750,000 Washington D.C. International.

Does Pincay respond only when the purse and the prestige are greatest? Obviously not. He has won more than 6,800 races in a 22-year career, second only to Shoemaker, who has won more than 8,700 races in a 39-year career.

No jockey can maintain his skills and connections riding only the feature race each day. Pincay knows that, but he is at a point where he now eliminates certain horses and races to conserve his strength for when it matters most.

In a way, yes, there’s no thrill like winning a Breeders’ Cup, no satisfaction like coping with the pressure of a major race.

“It’s not that you don’t try or that the others aren’t exciting anymore,” he said, relaxing in the jockeys’ room at Santa Anita the other day. “Doing your best every day is what it’s about, but I’ve told my agent (Tony Matos) that I don’t want to ride cheap horses anymore unless it’s a clear favorite. I don’t want to ride more than six or seven races a day because eight and nine can wipe you out.”

Trainer Wayne Lukas will put Pincay on three of his horses Saturday: Tejano in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Lost Kitty in the Juvenile Fillies and Clabber Girl in the Distaff.

Lukas said he has no problem with Pincay’s intensity, that his fire still seems to burn brighter than his peers’.

“Laffit has had to struggle and sacrifice to get where he is and I don’t believe he ever forgets that,” Lukas said.

The famed trainer thought he was home free in a recent maiden race when Jose Santos, a young and talented Eastern rider, brought his Sweet n Go down the stretch with a three-length lead, only to get beaten by Pincay at the wire.

“I told Jose later that you can never get comfortable when Pincay is in the race, that three lengths is never safe,” Lukas said. “I told him not to worry about it, but to learn from it. Jose went back to New York, I put Pincay on Sweet n Go and he won his next start by 11 lengths.”

Who doesn’t have a favorite Pincay ride?

Maybe it was the 1983 Belmont Stakes, in which Pincay brought Caveat through an inside hole that would have unnerved Walter Payton, kept the colt on its feet as it twice bounced off the rail and won in stride.

Maybe it was the 1979 Woodward Stakes, in which Pincay refused to push the generally front-running Affirmed, patiently waiting until Affirmed was ready to be pushed.

“You could watch a thousand races without seeing a horse ridden the way Pincay rode Affirmed that day,” the Washington Post’s Andrew Beyer wrote.

“An ordinary jockey wouldn’t have dared to do it, even if he thought it was right. Pincay’s ride was the sort that a jockey can deliver only when he possesses the unshakable self-confidence that comes from success and only in one of those periods when his every move is magic.”

That was then, this is now.

“If communication between horse and rider does really exist, Pincay has it more than anyone else,” jockey Chris McCarron said. “We still call him the incredible hulk because he’s so strong. But he also has finesse, and his rhythm in stride is better than any jockey I’ve ever seen.”

Pincay smiled. He likes the idea of people saying nice things about him still, of still competing for million-dollar purses.

How many times did he think he’d be finished by 40? How many times did the sun come up?

“I’d wake up each morning and say, ‘No, I can’t do it again,’ ” Pincay said, reflecting on the long struggle with his weight. “It was pain, there was never really any fun. There was always the pressure and never the enjoyment.

“I’d come home wanting to celebrate, wanting to have a nice meal, a few drinks, and it was always in the back of my mind that I’d have to suffer for it the next day.

“There is just no way I thought I’d be riding after I was 40. I mean, there were times I felt like I was killing myself. Nobody realizes how serious it was.”

He weighs 117 pounds now, compared to 115 during most of the 70s, when he was a self-described “artificial person,” living on prescription pills.

Diet pills. Water pills. Pills for headaches. Pills for leg cramps. He was elected to the Hall of Fame at 28. He won five Eclipse Awards as the nation’s leading jockey. He was the top money winner for five straight years, starting in 1970.

Yet, he could never be satisfied, never be sure of what the scale would read, never be positive how his body would react to the latest diet.

He hallucinated. He had dizzy spells. He collapsed in the jockeys’ room at Aqueduct and was told by a doctor that he was headed for a heart attack. He set up a sweatbox in the living room and went from it to a sweatbox at the track. He rode four winners and people yelled at him about the non-winners. He wrestled with insomnia, over-rode, drew suspensions and fought with colleagues.

“I had everything and nothing,” he said. “I kept asking myself if it was worth it and knew I was getting close to the point of saying no.”

Part of it was his coming from Panama with great expectations and being pushed by agents to fulfill his promise. Riding four winners was never enough. He was always being told that he had to be No. 1.

The larger part was the daily struggle to control his weight. He has tried nuts and grains, fruits, powders, fasting. It still goes on, but Pincay now believes he has better control on several fronts. His continued success has convinced him that there is no one he has to satisfy except himself. He has read continuously about nutrition and physiology and come to the conclusion that he can eat anything in small amounts. Vegetables. Lean meat. Chicken. Fish.

“I’ve never met a dieter who’s completely happy,” he said. “But I’m about as comfortable as a dieter can get. I still weigh my food. I still eat in ounces, not pounds.”

If that is one battle Pincay will always have to wage, it is likely that he will also always carry the memory of that phone call he received from his daughter Lisa in the jockeys’ room at Santa Anita Jan. 18, 1985. Linda Pincay, his wife, Lisa’s mother, had shot herself in apparent despondency over a long struggle with deteriorating health. She died two days later.

“She was my biggest fan, my biggest booster,” he said. “I may have been able to ride, but she taught me everything else. I was a scared kid from Panama and she was everything to me. I felt very much alone. I didn’t think I could continue.”

Supported by friends, relatives and the strength of his children, Lisa and Laffit Jr., Pincay ultimately returned to the security of what he does best.

“I thought of what I told her during that time when she didn’t think she was going to get well, which is that you have to face life, you can’t hide from it,” he said. “Time takes care of a lot, but there’s so much I don’t want to forget . . . the good times, the beautiful memories.

“People don’t think I want to talk about it, but I do. Why wouldn’t you want to remember someone you loved? Everyone loved her, I think.”

A horsewoman herself, the daughter of the late owner-breeder, William Radkovich, Linda and Laffit shared a home in the Los Feliz area. He has a new home in Glendale that he shares with actress Phyllis Davis. His daughter, Lisa, is 18 now and a psychology major at USC. Laffit Jr., is 12 and likely to participate in sports that don’t require dieting.

His dad can be seen walking or bicycling through the new neighborhood for 45 minutes each morning, following a routine that he believes is less stressful than riding morning workouts at the track. Coupled with the desire to avoid cheap horses, Pincay’s aim is to preserve his energy for the afternoon, when he faces the best riding colony in the world.

Can he still compete?

Well, if his bank account isn’t indication enough, there was March 14 at Santa Anita when he set track and personal records by riding seven winners.

Now he would still like to win a few of the races that have eluded him: The Preakness, the Marlboro Cup, the Arc de Triomphe. He figures that it will take five or six years to catch Shoemaker in wins, but then there’s no evidence that Shoemaker is about to retire.

“I used to be able to pick and choose what horses I wanted, but it doesn’t work that way anymore because there are so many good riders and they have their own customers,” Pincay said. “But I feel I’m riding as well as I ever have and I can definitely still compete.

“I don’t win riding titles by 30 or 40 winners anymore, but it would be bull if I said I wouldn’t go for it if I was in competition for one.

“The important thing is that I’m very contented. I don’t expect anything of myself except a good effort. There’s still pride, but no pressure. I’m prepared for anything that happens. I can see things clearer than at any time in my life.”

Among them, as always: The winner’s circle and the teller’s window.