There Are Still Instances When the Shoe Fits : Shoemaker and Nastique Team Up Again for Victory in Matriarch Stakes

Bill Shoemaker. That name ring a bell? A little guy who used to ride for most of the money, letting the other jockeys divvy up the crumbs. A guy who had his choice of 3 or 4 mounts every time a big race was run. A guy who could walk into any restaurant in the country and be immediately recognized, and not just because he was under 5 feet tall.

But that was years ago. Lately, Shoemaker went where Charlie Whittingham’s horses traveled, and both the jockey and the trainer thrived, but this year Whittingham was telling Shoemaker to stay at home. On Breeders’ Cup day, with 7 races worth $10 million being run at Churchill Downs, the 57-year-old Shoemaker couldn’t get a mount. The week before the Breeders’ Cup, Shoemaker was riding for an appearance fee at the outpost known as Beulah Park, near Columbus, Ohio. It was like the Neil Simon doing a play in Oxnard.

This year is going to end with Shoemaker’s horses having earned under $4 million for the first time since 1977. Before Sunday, Shoemaker, who had won a record 995 stakes, had won only 2 major races this year--with Jeanne Jones in the Fantasy at Oaklawn Park and Lively One in the Swaps at Hollywood Park.

Shoemaker said in late October that next year would be his last, but added that he thought he could still ride. In New York, trainer Steve DiMauro apparently wasn’t paying attention to the ostracizing of Shoemaker. All DiMauro knew was that they had combined for an occasional victory through the years, and he had this 4-year-old filly--Nastique--who would fit Shoemaker like hand and glove.

“Steve was looking for somebody with light hands to ride this little filly,” Shoemaker said Sunday, minutes after he rode Nastique to a 1 1/4- length win in the $200,000 Matriarch Stakes at Hollywood Park Sunday. Annoconnor finished second, three-quarters of a length ahead of White Mischief, with Goodbye Halo, the 2-1 favorite, winding up fifth in the 10-horse field of grass-running fillies and mares.

“I wish Shoemaker could ride forever,” DiMauro said.

DiMauro, who won the Eclipse Award in 1975--the year he had Wajima, the champion 3-year-old colt--was disenchanted with some of the rides Nastique had been getting in the East, so when he brought her to California, he signed on Shoemaker.

The pair finished second in the Yellow Ribbon at Santa Anita Nov. 6, then Shoemaker rode Nastique to a win in the Silver Bells Handicap two weeks later, which had been Shoemaker’s only win of the Hollywood Park fall-winter season before the Matriarch.

In the 1 1/8-mile Matriarch, Nastique was in seventh place, but not far from the pace-setting Annoconnor, after a half-mile. The daughter of Naskra and La Fantastique was in the middle of the track at the top of the stretch, one of about four horses trying to run down Annoconnor. Inside the sixteenth pole, Nastique made the lead and romped home.

Shoemaker told DiMauro after the race that he’s never ridden a filly he’s liked as much as Nastique. For those in the crowd of 21,370--yes, that’s the same crowd Hollywood Park announced for Saturday--who liked Nastique, her payoffs were $11, $6.20 and $5.40 as she was timed in 1:47, tying the stakes record set by Kilijaro in 1981. Annoconnor paid $4.60 and $3.40 and White Mischief, a 31-1 shot, paid $10.40.

“I really like this filly,” Shoemaker said. “She really tries. She’s kind of short striding, but she never says no.

“I had a beautiful trip all the way. I was on the rail, saving ground. At the three-eighths pole, Goodbye Halo went out and that left me room, and I got through.”

Nastique earned $110,000 for her owners, Bernard Chaus and Herb Goldstein of Cornwall, Conn. She came into the Matriarch with 14 races on dirt and 14 on grass, wins on both surfaces and earnings of almost $600,000.

“She can run on turf or dirt, she can even run up a wall,” DiMauro said. “There were no races left in the East, and the weather was getting bad back there, so we brought her out to see what she could do.”

DiMauro has had success with shipping horses to California before, but mostly at Santa Anita. The Very One won stakes at Santa Anita in 1980 and 1981, and Shoemaker rode Romantic Lead to victory for DiMauro in a division of the Malibu in 1977.

“My filly didn’t get tired, she just got outrun,” said Corey Black, who was riding Annoconnor. “They ran the last eighth of a mile in :12 flat and the last three-eighths in :35 4/5, and my filly really can’t go any faster than that.”

Goodbye Halo, a prominent filly on dirt early in the year, quit winning in July, and even switching to grass hasn’t ended her losing streak, which now stands at five races. Running against such quality opponents as Personal Ensign and Winning Colors, the 1-2 finishers in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, has also contributed to the slump of Goodbye Halo, who lost that stake by just a half-length.

“The ground may have been too hard,” jockey Eddie Delahoussaye said of Goodbye Halo’s Matriarch. “I hit her left-handed and she came out, then I switched to the right and she didn’t respond. In this race, she wasn’t striding out as good.”

DiMauro moves his operation to Florida now, with Nastique getting a rest before she runs next year. She is the only important horse Shoemaker is riding these days, and he won’t want to give her up.

“I couldn’t have written this race any better than the way it happened,” Shoemaker said.

Going into his 41st year in the saddle, he himself doesn’t want to be written off, either.

Horse Racing Notes

Miesque, the French filly who won the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 1987 and then was voted the Eclipse Award for champion female on grass, won the race again this year and is expected to be named champion. Herb Goldstein, a minority owner of Nastique, feels that an American champion should be a horse who runs more than one race in this country. “There should be a minimum number of races a horse runs in America in order to be eligible for an Eclipse,” Goldstein said. “The year Seattle Slew was voted best 2-year-old (1976), he only ran two times. Now everybody knew he was going to be a potentially great one, but still there were just the two races. Royal Ski won about 5 or 6 stakes the same year. Horses should run a decent amount of races before they qualify for an Eclipse.” . . . Bill Shoemaker now has won 8,784 races and his horses have been first in 251 races worth $100,000 or more. . . . At Aqueduct Sunday, High Brite, under Angel Cordero, beat King’s Swan by 4 lengths in the Gravesend Handicap. It was High Brite’s second straight win since finishing next to last in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. . . . Ray Sibille rode both halves of the $414.40 daily double at Hollywood Park.