Heady Eddie Rides Into 80th Stretch

He was the greatest jockey of his era; some say of all time. Eddie Arcaro, at 80, reflects on highlights of a remarkable career. The writer, also retired, has known the jockey since his days as an AP reporter.

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They pinned three nicknames on him: Banana Nose, Heady Eddie and The Master. The third was what the other jockeys called him. They held him in awe.

Eddie Arcaro, the king of race riders for almost 30 years, the big-money booter, the guy with the winning touch when the stakes ran high, will celebrate his 80th birthday on Feb. 19.

As ever, he is taking the weight of all those years in stride. He expects to observe the day as he observes every day, with a round of golf--if it doesn’t rain. Eddie has mixed feelings about rain.

His brilliant career, and his life, very nearly ended on a muddy track. As it was, he rode for two more years before he called it quits, in 1961. He had turned 45 and had a page of the record book all to himself. Some of his records have been eclipsed over time but no other jockey has come within a furlong of Arcaro’s record in Triple Crown races. He won 17.

The ride that nearly cost him his life was a Triple Crown event. It was at the Belmont Stakes in 1959 on a muddy track. As an Associated Press reporter, I saw it happen.

The Belmont is a relentless run of a mile and one-half, once around the spacious oval. Eddie rode Black Hills, a long-striding colt and the second choice to Sword Dancer, the eventual winner.

Arcaro had Black Hills in third or fourth place behind Sword Dancer for the first mile, the position he wanted. In the middle of the stretch turn he sent Black Hills up along the rail with a flashing move that seemed certain to carry the colt into the lead.

Then the left front leg of Black Hills snapped, sickeningly. The horse went down and the jockey went flying. Eddie landed face down on the sloppy track. Two horses charged up from behind and one of them struck Arcaro a glancing blow in the head.

“I was unconscious,” he recalled recently. “I was drowning with my face in a puddle. Only one man was nearby, a photographer. He ran out on the track and lifted me up. He saved my life.”

The view from the stands was chilling. In my AP report, I wrote: “Arcaro was sprawled grotesquely on the track, a rag doll in a mud puddle.”

Arcaro suffered a concussion and was out of action for a month. His only other serious spill was in 1933 at age 17, at the beginning of his career. He was riding a horse named Gun Fire at a Chicago track. He suffered a fractured skull and a punctured lung and was sidelined for four months.

Both times, he climbed back in the saddle and picked up where he’d left off, riding winners.

From 1931 to 1961 he won the Kentucky Derby five times, a record he shares with Bill Hartack; the Preakness six times, a record; and the Belmont Stakes six times, a record he shares with a 19th century jockey named Jimmy McLaughlin.

And he’s the only jockey to win all three Triple Crown races twice. He won with Whirlaway in 1941 and Citation in 1948. Both horses raced for Calumet Farm and were trained by Ben Jones.

Arcaro recalls the two horses and their trainer with fondness and remarkable clarity.

Jones, Arcaro recalls, had contrived a special set of blinkers for Whirlaway for the Kentucky Derby. They gave the colt a view of only the inside rail. He also gave Arcaro specific instructions:

“Don’t mind if you break last. This colt is slow to get going but he can run the fastest last half mile of any horse I have ever seen. Make your move at the half-mile pole.”

Arcaro did just so. Running eighth at the half-mile pole, 10 lengths behind the leader, Whirlaway began his move. He streaked into the lead at the head of the stretch and won in a gallop.

Citation’s Derby was in 1948. Eddie always listed Citation first when asked to name the greatest horses he rode. (Second: Kelso.) Actually Eddie wanted to ride Citation’s stablemate, Coaltown, in the Derby but Ben Jones said no.

“Citation will bury Coaltown any time you ask him to,” Jones said.

Arcaro found himself six lengths back of Coaltown at the half-mile pole on a sloppy track at Churchill Downs. But he waited. At the head of the stretch he asked Citation for his best. In a half-dozen strides the big horse was in front and pulled away in a romp.

The Jones-Arcaro team had won the Derby with Lawrin in 1938 and won it again with Hill Gail in 1952. Eddie is not much for looking back at losses but he still regrets having picked the wrong horse in 1942.

He had his choice of two Greentree Stable starters, Devil Diver and Shut Out. Trainer John Gaver told him: “Shut Out is in better condition right now.”

Arcaro mulishly stuck with Devil Diver and finished out of the money. Shut Out won. Had he listened to Gaver he’d have had a record six Derby winners. He did ride Shut Out later that year, winning the Belmont, Travers and Arlington Classic.

When he retired in 1961, Arcaro left a record, since surpassed, of 554 stakes victories.

Eddie now lives in Miami. He and his late wife, Ruth, had two children who have given Eddie five grandchildren, all girls. “There are no male Arcaros to carry on the line,” Eddie commented ruefully.

He has had two heart bypass operations and is holding prostate cancer at bay with monthly hormone shots. But none of the ailments seem to dim his love for golf. Once a 10-handicap player, he still, at age 80, shoots in the 90s.

He says he’s as much addicted to vitamins as he is to golf. “I take 10 or 12 vitamins a day,” he said. “I consider them one of the reasons I can play 18 holes of golf a day without collapsing.”

What made Arcaro great? His textbook seat on a horse, clearly. He also had strong and sensitive hands, cold nerve of a skydiver, the judgment of a fighter pilot to make split-second decisions.

And now, from the high hill of age, he has an uncluttered perspective of his accomplishments and his place on the planet. What was the greatest day of his life?

Eddie grinned. “The day my father boarded a banana boat in Italy to come to the United States.”