Cordero Ages Frantically, Not Gracefully

The gate springs open and Angel Cordero goes to the whip almost as though he is attempting to transfer his own zeal through the leather crop to the horse beneath him. Thwack! Cordero lights both ends of the candle. Thwack! Cordero fans the flames.

Leaving the gate in a whip-propelled drive is an unusual tactic employed often by Cordero in the first two weeks of racing at Saratoga, where he led the jockey standings for a dozen Augusts in succession, from 1976-87. It is a tactic guaranteed to create chaos; a frustrating sight for handicappers accustomed to being frustrated by Cordero whether they have wagered on his horse or against. It is a tactic that screams: “I am not too old! I’m at Saratoga! I will make this horse win!”

In an age when patience, finesse and soft hands are considered virtues, Cordero has been riding the crest of a snarling rage against time and youth at Saratoga, the track he ruled in the shimmering blossom of a career in which the tooth has grown long. “It’s the one title everyone wants to win,” he said. It is the one title no rider relishes more than Cordero.

The screaming machismo has not waned in the 48-year-old whose career is already filled with the stuff of legend. But, figuratively speaking, he has lost a step or two, a loss that shows in a heated stretch battle. Although the spirit is still willing, Cordero does not muscle a horse to the wire as he once did.

Cordero looks around the jockeys’ room nowadays and sees the people who are riding the important horses he would have ridden only a few years ago: Jerry Bailey, Mike Smith, Jose Santos, Chris Antley, Craig Perret, Julie Krone. He sees Herb McCauley, Richard Migliore, Art Madrid Jr. and Corey Black, young riders with their best days yet to dawn. The jockey colony here is deeper than it has been in years.

The leading New York stables virtually have abandoned Cordero, which makes his presence at the top of the standings after two weeks of the meeting all the more remarkable. “This place brings out the best in me,” he said Sunday after riding his third winner of the day and 12th of a week in which he was astride more longshots than favorites. More remarkably, without riding an important horse through the first seven months of 1991, Cordero is the nation’s ninth-leading rider in purses won, with more than $4.3 million. Still, he trails Bailey, Smith and Krone on that list, too.

Cordero has entertained and rejected thoughts of retirement. Eventually, he says, he will turn to training. But for now: “There’s nothing else I can do and make this much money.”

Cordero no longer rides for D. Wayne Lukas, for whom he has won three Breeders’ Cup races and a Preakness. The calls from Shug McGaughey, Leroy Jolley and John Veitch are infrequent. The invitations from out-of-town trainers courting his services have slowed to a trickle.

Smith, 26, has been the dominant rider in New York this year and comes off a remarkable 86-victory meeting at Belmont. Bailey, 34, has emerged in the last two seasons as one of the nation’s premier jockeys. Krone has gained a firm foothold in her first summer in New York. Antley is always a force. And if many were happy to see Santos return in frustration from California in time for Saratoga, Cordero was not among them.

His current position notwithstanding, Cordero will find it most difficult to hold off the competition at this meeting. He sees Smith as the main threat. “I’m not confident I’ll win the title. It looks better than it did after the first week,” Cordero said, “(but Smith) has the customers (trainers).”

Santos was mildly successful by most standards in California (60 winners from 617 starters and a half-dozen stakes in seven months). He elected to return, however, shortly before the Saratoga meeting. “If I stayed,” he said, “I was going to ruin my career.”

Santos failed to make inroads with West Coast trainers and found no reason to continue trying. While based here, he was the national leader in purses won four times and an Eclipse Award winner in 1988. Trainers here have welcomed his decision to return, but it will take time to recultivate clients who have done without his services since the last Breeders’ Cup and are committed to other riders. Yet Santos’ timing could not have been better.

It was Santos who in 1988 ended Cordero’s Saratoga reign at a dozen consecutive riding titles. Cordero rebounded in ’89. Antley, who returns from a suspension this week, won last year.

No matter who wins the race within the races here, Cordero’s presence, the fervor with which he attempts to defend the territory he considers his and the support of the upstate fans who consider him a Saratoga icon will provide a compelling subplot. There is no reward for finishing first in the rider standings here except in having done it at the Spa. Geography is everything.

“Nobody cares who wins at Aqueduct or Belmont,” Cordero said. But, as Antley said after clinching the title here a year ago: “If I never do anything again, I’ll always have won the riding title at Saratoga.”