McCarron Is on Right Back at Right Time : Horse racing: After some politicking, he rides Pine Bluff in the Preakness.

Chris McCarron was doing what he does second best--working a media crowd, hitting all the right notes, dishing out sound bites like a polished campaigner.

He thanked fellow jockeys Craig Perret and Mike Smith for picking the wrong horses. He thanked Pimlico’s head of racing, Tim Capps, for tipping him off about Pine Bluff. He thanked trainer Tom Bohannan and John Ed Anthony for giving him a chance to win the Preakness for a second time.

It was classic McCarron, a master of racing politics with networking skills that rival a high-powered Hollywood agent.

McCarron acknowledged, though, that he had turned down an opportunity to ride Pine Bluff earlier this year, and that it was only a stroke of blind luck that put the red-haired jockey and the bay colt together at last.

“I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” McCarron said with a broad smile.

The place was Pimlico, and the time was a week before the Preakness when McCarron was in town to ride Twilight Agenda in the Pimlico Special.

Capps, top man in the Pimlico publicity department, tipped McCarron to the fact that Pine Bluff might be needing a rider in the Preakness. The jockey quickly reached Bohannan at his Belmont Park barn.

Back in March, the Pine Bluff people wanted McCarron for a three-race package that included two races in Arkansas and the Kentucky Derby. But McCarron decided to sign with the English colt Dr Devious for the Derby, so the deal fell through.

Pine Bluff was up for grabs again in the Preakness when Perret, his Derby rider, switched to Alydeed. And Smith, Perret’s back-up, was tied to Big Sur for the Preakness.

So McCarron ended up back in his adopted hometown of Baltimore with a live Preakness horse, and continued to dismantle the theory that horse and rider require a long relationship to prosper.

Time after time, McCarron has stepped into pressure situations at the last minute to win take major events. As a quick study, his record is peerless:

--In 1983, when Bill Shoemaker opted to ride a horse named The Wonder, McCarron took over on the 8-year-old John Henry and won the American Handicap at Hollywood Park.

--In 1986, McCarron swooped into New York to ride Danzig Connection for the first time in the Belmont Stakes. They won by a length.

--In 1988, McCarron subbed for an injured Laffit Pincay aboard Forty Niner in the Travers Stakes. The result: McCarron by a nose.

--In 1989, when Pat Valenzuela was grounded by a positive drug test barely two weeks before the Breeders’ Cup, McCarron was Charlie Whittingham’s choice to ride Sunday Silence in the $3-million Classic. McCarron responded with a neck victory that made Sunday Silence Horse of the Year.

“The first time I saw Pine Bluff was this morning at the barn,” McCarron said late Saturday afternoon.

McCarron had about 10 minutes to get to know the rest of Pine Bluff during the post parade and warmups.

Pine Bluff was an easy read. He answered McCarron’s every nudge and tug through a mile. In the stretch, McCarron used a left-right-left whip combination, and Pine Bluff accelerated with every whack.

“You don’t want to ride just any horse in the Triple Crown races. . . ,” McCarron said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to get lucky.”

Or make your own luck.