He Saves the Best for Last

Eddie Delahoussaye won two Kentucky Derbies. Only 10 other riders have done that.

Delahoussaye won two in a row. Only three other riders have done that. One of them did it in 1890-91, the other in 1901-02.

Sometime this coming week or 10 days, Delahoussaye is going to ride his 5,000th lifetime winner. That’s another short list. Only 12 jockeys have done that.

You would think, then, that Delahoussaye would be getting poems written about him. “Give me a heady/Guy like Eddie” to the tune of “Give me a handy/Guy like Sande.”

You’d think he’d have a nickname--”The Pumper,” “The Slasher,” “The Ice Man.” He doesn’t. He is simply Eddie D.

Riding a race horse is an athletic art form, like any other. Like hitting a one-iron, throwing a curve, jumping a hurdle, running a pass pattern. You have to be half-man, half-animal to do it properly. You have to, in a sense, be able to think like a horse. You have to sense his mood, gauge his courage, cajole him into giving his best.

You have to weigh 100 pounds but be as strong as a 300-pounder. It’s a contest, really. The horse has a 1,100-pound pull in the weights. It’s not only hard work, it’s dangerous. The horse is not your bridle path canter or the cowboy’s best friend. He’s willful, resentful. He’s really trying to get away from you. He kicks, bites, maims. If he were human, he would be Al Capone. He takes a lot of controlling.

Delahoussaye does it as well as anybody who ever climbed on a horse, and that probably includes Geronimo and Billy the Kid.

He fits a horse, he doesn’t fight him. He tries to be a partner, not a master.

Every great jockey is a judge of pace. They are said to “have a clock in their heads.” Delahoussaye has a stopwatch in his. If the race starts at the eighth pole, Delahoussaye usually has plenty of horse. He is one of the best since Longden at holding a horse’s run together.

But he never has won an Eclipse Award. Bettors do not go to the windows and say, “Give me $20 on Delahoussaye’s horse.” He has won two Belmonts and a Preakness to go with his Derbies. Only the great ones win those.

Riders get reputations like other athletes. The book on Eddie D. is “put him on a come-from-behind horse.” He is best at “rating” his animal, being patient, waiting for the field to come back to him. He is cool, unflappable. Steady Eddie. If Delahoussaye isn’t laying fifth, his horse is “rank”--uncontrollable..

Delahoussaye doesn’t mind. So long as it doesn’t keep him on the backs of no-chance shadow-jumpers who like to get off last and consolidate their positions. “If the horse can stay on the front end, so can I,” he says, smiling.

Delahoussaye was not a born rider. He didn’t get up on a horse’s back with the ability to talk to horses like a Shoemaker or with the built-in sense of pace of a Longden. He had to learn his craft. If he were a ballplayer, he would be Pete Rose. He made himself great. His first full year of riding, he rode 189 races and won only nine.

He grew up in the canebreaks of Louisiana, Cajun country, and he tended to be uneasy in places where the accents weren’t fractured French and the menu didn’t have gumbo and Tabasco on it.

It wasn’t easy to convince himself he belonged on horseback, he acknowledges. The results were not reassuring. But he was the hardest worker at the bush tracks of the bayou. He almost never rode a horse he hadn’t tried out in the morning. “I studied riders who had come to Louisiana from Florida and New York--Bobby Baird, Ray Broussard,” he says. “But, mostly, I studied the horses.”

Delahoussaye rode mostly in the Midwest, where he supposed the competition was less daunting. But he underestimated himself. He got a reputation as a “money” rider. Delahoussaye’s mounts were usually in contention. Trainers liked him because he usually brought back a horse who was not used up. Eddie’s mounts had long careers.

Delahoussaye came to California in 1979, trying to break into the top cavalry in the country--Shoemaker, Lafitt Pincay, Chris McCarron, Gary Stevens, Pat Valenzuela and even the occasional Angel Cordero and Pat Day.

He was competitive right away. The reality of it was, Eddie D. never got on the favorite. The second favorite, perhaps. The pecking order came down through the Eclipse Award-winning riders. “They never put me on the speed horses,” he says ruefully. He had to work for his firsts. Also seconds.

When he got Gato Del Sol in the 1982 Kentucky Derby, it was not exactly like getting Affirmed--or Secretariat. Gato was the longest of long shots. He was considered a plodder who had won the Del Mar Futurity and not much else. He ran at Kentucky like a guy who suddenly remembers he has left his wallet behind on the dining room table. He was 19th in the 19-horse field at the half-mile pole. But Delahoussaye never panicked and began to pick up horses like a train going past telephone poles. He won by 2 1/2 lengths. It was the largest payoff ($44.40) since Proud Clarion in 1967.

The next year, Sunny’s Halo was a co-favorite and Eddie D. showed his versatility. Sunny’s Halo was on the lead, first or second, all the way around. He also won by two lengths.

Delahoussaye, who lives near Santa Anita with his wife of 23 years, Juanita; his son, Loren, who is 14; and his developmentally disabled daughter, Mandy, 17, comes with the winner’s circle these days. He was the rider on A.P. Indy, horse of the year last year.

He probably should have been rider of the year and doubtless would have been if A.P. Indy had won the Triple Crown, as he should have. He came up with a hoof crack on the eve of the Derby.

Delahoussaye should have been the SPCA’s rider of the year. He rode A.P. Indy to victory in the Breeder’s Cup Classic without once resorting to the whip. He won the 1983 Kentucky Derby on Sunny’s Halo under a hand ride.

With five Triple Crown winners and the right to ride every horse who will lay fifth down the backstretch, Delahoussaye is a Hall of Fame rider.

Who needs an Eclipse? Delahoussaye will probably settle for the day at Santa Anita soon when they stop the card and give him a plaque for his 5,000th first-place finish. They should bronze the whip. After all, Delahoussaye doesn’t really need it.