Desormeaux Succeeds at Being 5-Foot-3 Giant

When he was a little kid growing up in Louisiana, Kent Desormeaux used to have this recurring nightmare. He dreamed that he would grow up tall, dark and handsome, that he’d look good in a tuxedo but not on a horse. The prospect used to depress him.

Most kids, when they’re going through school, can’t wait to get taller. They chin themselves on parallel bars, they send away for stretching exercises, they eat their Wheaties. They want to be Jack Armstrong. They clock their progress on the kitchen wall and yearn for the day they reach six feet or more.

Remember the magazine campaigns Charles Atlas used to put out? He would show bullies kicking sand in the face of this shrimp and challenge you to buy his program and stop being a 98-pound weakling.

Kent Desormeaux would want to send away for a program that could keep him at 98 pounds, but not necessarily a weakling. He never wanted to get to the place where a basketball coach would look at him covetously.

You see, Desormeaux never wanted to be a matinee idol or a linebacker or even a baseball player. He wanted to be exactly what he became--one of the best race riders in history.

He didn’t exactly go around with an anvil on his head or hire someone to put him in a box and sit on it. He drank his milk and ate his jambalaya, but he dreaded the day he couldn’t get his clothes in the boys’ department. One of the worst days of his life was when he could see himself in a mirror. If he could have gone to a witch doctor, he would have.

Kent had a lot going for him. He came from a long line of Louisiana Cajuns, those interesting people George II of England kicked out of Nova Scotia--then known as Acadia--in 1655 who migrated to the bayous and preserved their French language and identity for three centuries. Kent came from a family of six, and all were, fortunately, people you could see over. Cajun cooking is famous all over the world today, but the Desormeaux bill of fare was not always blackened fish and pecan pie.

The trick was, every inch of height would probably cost Kent Desormeaux a million dollars and a 6-foot top-out would have probably put him on a shrimp boat instead of a Kentucky Derby favorite.

At 5-feet-3 and 110 pounds, Kent Desormeaux has a perfect build for a jockey. He showed up for an interview the other day munching on a Snickers bar at 11 in the morning. Laffit Pincay can probably eat a Snickers bar every year ending in zero. Otherwise, he has to go to the sweat box if he even looks at one.

But Desormeaux doesn’t even have to worry about his teeth, let alone his waist.

There are almost as many riding styles as there are riders. Some jockeys try to become part of the horse. Others simply try to take charge of the horse. Some sit cooly. Others scratch all around the horse’s back as if a swarm of bees were after them. Some whip. Others cajole.

Desormeaux is a chameleon. If the horse wants to fly to the front, he lets him. If the horse is better suited to rating--holding his exuberance in check for later stages of the race--Desormeaux reins him in.

He is fearless. They don’t make a hole too small for him to try to squeeze a horse through. But he is not a Cossack. If the horse is outrun, he doesn’t open fire.

Last year, Kent Desormeaux won more races in a season than any rider--599 of them. (The official figure had been 598 but, a court review recently removed a disqualification from one of his winners).

Students of the game were impressed.

“Desormeaux would win races while learning his craft,” one veteran Maryland race tracker, Tom Aronson, noted. “He’d be trying to rate horses or sending them on--he’d be experimenting. And still he’d win!”

Jockeys are the only athletes in the sport of kings. And, like any other athletes, they have their superstars, their stars, their journeymen and their hangers-on. Desormeaux has burst on the racing scene as a combination of Stan Musial, Willie Mays and Nolan Ryan.

Not since a young Bill Shoemaker has a rider burst on the scene with these kinds of numbers--450 winners his first year, 474 his second and 599 his third.

Only three riders in track annals have won 500 or more races a year--Chris McCarron, Sandy Hawley and Kent Desormeaux. Kent rode in 2,312 races last season--and was in the money in 1,292 of them.

They used to write poems about jockeys who posted figures like that.

When you have run the table in Maryland racing, you can do one of two things: You can go to New York, or you can go to California.

New York is safer. So Kent Desormeaux came to California and is riding at Hollywood Park this summer, where he’ll only have McCarron, in person, not just in records, to compete against. He’ll also have Laffit Pincay, Eddie Delahoussaye, Gary Stevens, Pat Valenzuela, Robbie Davis and Alex Solis.

Desormeaux (pronounced Duh-ZOR-mo) went west for the same reason Willie Sutton went to banks--it’s where the money is.

“It’s also where the elite of racing is--the horses as well as the riders,” Desormeaux says. “It’s where you find out how good you really are or can be.”

Desormeaux would seem to be very good indeed. He’s leading the Hollywood Park meet and would be leading by more if he didn’t do something Shoemaker once did--stand up in the irons before the finish line. Shoe did it in the Kentucky Derby, Desormeaux did it in an allowance race at Hollywood Park Saturday.

But, California is proving an easy wheel for the this cagey Cajun. Arriving late at Santa Anita, and thus having to settle for pretty much leftover stock to ride, he was in the money in 90 of 259 races and won 35.

Last Sunday, he won the San Juan Capistrano on a $37.20 longshot. The chart of the race noted the winner Delegant as “patiently handled” and “gained strongly without being roused with the whip” and “continued to draw clear while not being roused with the whip.”

Will Kent Desormeaux be a statue in the paddock one day, a legendary famous American rider like Paul Revere, Geronimo, Shoemaker, Longden, Laverne Fator? Does he move a horse up two lengths just being in the irons?

Well, he is 7,214 wins behind Shoemaker. But he’s only 20. He already got the big break he needed--he stopped growing at 5 1/4 feet.

“I used to get down on my knees and pray I wouldn’t get any taller,” he admits.

His prayers were answered. Maybe God plays the horses.

FAULTY FINISH: Kent Desormeaux stands at the wrong finish line and costs Morlando a victory in the third race Saturday at Hollywood Park. C21