He’s Got a Ticket to Ride, 200 Million Reasons for It

He gets up every morning, the $200-million man, and goes to work, same way he always has, same way he will until age catches up to him in a way that fast horses cannot. Chris McCarron still loves the smell of hay in the morning. It smells more than ever like victory.

A couple of weeks ago, while making a phone call to the Daily Racing Form to check on another matter, McCarron discovered, to his amazement, that he had nearly caught Laffit Pincay as racing’s all-time leading rider in money won. Soon thereafter he did pass Pincay, winning the third race Feb. 19 at Santa Anita on a horse named Ski Dancer, which gave him accumulated winnings of $190,315,569.

Next time he spoke to his agent, McCarron said, “Now we’ve definitely got something to shoot for. Become the first $200-million winner.”

Ever since, the two jockeys have jockeyed for position. McCarron is currently around a hundred grand ahead, and will ride the expected favorite, Helmsman, in Saturday’s Santa Anita Handicap, which is worth $550,000 to the winner. Pincay, at present, has no ride in the Big ‘Cap, although that could change. He could end up on the longshot, Score Quick.

Nine years McCarron’s senior at 49, Pincay isn’t getting the mounts he once did, so his earnings are tapering off. Taking calls wherever he can get them, Pincay traveled all the way to New Orleans last weekend, simply to ride in a $75,000 stake. He ran fifth. And, distinguished as he is, Pincay was given no horse to ride in the 1995 Kentucky Derby or Breeders’ Cup.

McCarron, meanwhile, is at the top of his racing form. His mounts won more than $11.3 million last year, among them in the $2-million Breeders’ Cup Turf race. He remains one of the most sought-after riders in the business.

Having turned 40, he hasn’t slowed down.

“My heart is going to tell me when it’s time to quit,” McCarron says. “There’s a rod in my left leg and I’m not as young as I used to be, but the truth of the matter is, I never felt better in my life.

“I still love going out in the morning. I’m as fascinated with the art of training horses as well as I am riding them. Wayne Lukas has his methods and trains them one way, Ron McAnally has his methods, and Charlie Whittingham has his methods. They’re like basketball coaches. No two of them do things the same way.”

That’s another reason McCarron still finds the sport so appealing, after all these years.

“It’s a place where you have your Rockefellers and Vanderbilts right beside somebody who sneaked across the border,” he says.

When you think of the praise heaped on athletes in other individual pursuits, golf and tennis and such, for reaching $1 million in career earnings, the notion of McCarron making a run at $200 million is all the more staggering. Not that it all ends up in his pocket, but money is the way people keep score in many sports, particularly this one. That makes the 5-foot-2, 111-pound McCarron one of the most successful athletes who ever lived.

At first, he got a laugh out of learning that he had become racing’s richest rider, asking, “Does my wife know about this?”

But money is also a serious matter, particularly to jockeys less fortunate than McCarron.

That is one of the reasons he and his wife, Judy, along with actor Tim Conway, created the Don MacBeth Memorial Jockey Fund to aid injured riders. Should McCarron win a $100,000 bonus that goes to any rider who sweeps the Santa Anita Handicap, June 30 Hollywood Gold Cup at Hollywood Park and Aug. 10 Pacific Classic at Del Mar, it will be donated to the fund.

As for a $2-million bonus prize awarded the horse’s owner for sweeping those races, that would go toward McCarron’s $200 million.

Helmsman has a shot, now that Cigar is out of Saturday’s race. McCarron has ridden him six times, to four firsts and two seconds. But he will have Serena’s Song, Alphabet Soup, Afternoon Deelites, Urgent Request and others to outrun, and for all his success, McCarron has won the Big ‘Cap only once in 14 tries.

How will his horse do against Serena’s Song, the filly? That’s the next challenge for the $200-million man.

He says, “I’ll be on Helmsperson.”