1,000th Stakes Win for Shoemaker : Peace Gets Wire-to-Wire Victory in Premiere Handicap

Bill Shoemaker’s locker in the jockeys’ room at Hollywood Park is typical of the man. But for one item, it could belong to almost any rider.

The fading newspaper photograph, however, identifies it as Shoemaker’s space and no one else’s. Pinned to the wall, the photo shows Shoemaker carrying his daughter, Amanda, in his arms, and the headline above reads: “$100-Million Jockey.”

The picture was taken in 1985, after a victory aboard Lord at War at Santa Anita had pushed Shoemaker’s career earnings over the $100-million mark. For him, it was an historic moment.

On Sunday, Shoemaker achieved another milestone, becoming the first jockey in history to win 1,000 stakes races when he scored a wire-to-wire triumph aboard Peace in the $110,700 Premiere Handicap in front of a crowd of 27,330 at Hollywood Park.

And, once again in low-key Shoemaker fashion, he almost downplayed the achievement.

“Well, I knew it was going to happen sooner or later,” he said of his 8,796th victory and his 254th in a race worth at least $100,000. “It’s another milestone. I’m kind of glad that it happened here instead of in Europe or someplace.”

At the end of this month, the 57-year-old Shoemaker sets off for Europe, a part of his farewell tour in his last year of competitive riding.

If Shoemaker was content to downplay Sunday’s historic ride, his fellow jockeys were not.

“Unbelievable,” said Gary Stevens, who finished second, a length behind, on the favorite, Steinlen. “It’s hard to imagine for somebody like me. I’ve just started my 10th year, and I’ve got something like 2,400 wins, period. This guy’s got a thousand stakes wins. It’s just phenomenal, the things he did in the past and the things he’s still doing.”

And from Eddie Delahoussaye, who brought Political Ambition home third, a neck back: “That’s great. A thousand stakes. Man, that’s a lot of races.”

In many of them, Shoemaker has teamed with trainer Charlie Whittingham, who trains Peace but who was in Louisville Sunday with his Kentucky Derby horse, Sunday Silence. Still, assistant trainer Rodney Rash expressed a sentiment shared by many.

“After all the victories Bill and Charlie have had together, it just seems right that this one should come for them together,” Rash said.

“And Charlie has always said that there’s no one in the world who can ride on the front end like Bill. That’s just what he did today. And when Steinlen came to him, he’d saved enough. He still had more at the end.”

Shoemaker, in fact, gave Peace a masterful ride, taking him to the front from the start in the field of eight and fighting off the twin challenges of Steinlen and Political Ambition in the closing furlong.

Peace’s time of 1:33 flat for the mile on a firm turf course set a stakes record, breaking Steinlen’s year-old mark. It was Shoemaker’s sixth victory in Hollywood Park’s oldest stakes race, his first having come aboard Special Touch in 1951.

“A thousand stakes wins is not going to hold up too long,” Shoemaker said, “because they have a lot of stakes these days and some of these guys are going to be breaking it.”