It’s Been Quite a Ride

“He’s the greatest rider to come out of Boston since Paul Revere!”

That, at least, was the contention of Santa Anita President and CEO Bill Baker, talking about the great race rider Chris McCarron the other day.

But, wait a minute! I hate to tell you this, but the late great nightclub comic, and horse race degenerate, Joe E. Lewis, used to say he didn’t care for Revere’s ride. “He went wide at Lexington,” Joe E. claimed.

Which would seem to leave McCarron as Massachusetts’ all-time great reinsman. He never had the redcoats to worry about but he had plenty of other colors to beat.

Willie Shoemaker, by common consent, is usually rated as history’s greatest horseman--if you discount Geronimo and Buffalo Bill and note that Custer rode into a blind switch at Little Big Horn.

But McCarron, by any yardstick, is no worse than fifth on a list of all-time riders.

You think Tiger Woods made a big splash when he came out on the golf tour and won the Masters and five other tournaments his first full year on tour?

Well, McCarron in his first full year on the track in 1974 only broke the all-time record for victories. He rode--get this!--546 victories. He broke Sandy Hawley’s record by a rousing 31 victories. (Only a few months earlier, he had been thrilled to get Hawley’s autograph in the walking ring at Suffolk Downs.)

No one ever fit a horse better than McCarron. He rode eight cards a week (twice on Sunday) that first year, flew from New Jersey to western Pennsylvania to add to the record. He got on rank 2-year-olds, $2,000 claimers, shadow-jumpers, biters, kickers and equine psychopaths, but they all ran kindly for him. It’s said a horse knows whether it is friend or foe on his back and some riders get a run out of their horses the way a Cossack did--by sheer terror. McCarron, like Shoemaker before him, was a partner to the horse, not a master.

It was said McCarron on a horse added a length or two to his (or her) capability. Bettors recognized this and McCarron on a burro would probably go off at no more than 3-to-1 on his good days.

Of course, he doesn’t get on burros. The reason he was able to set the record in ’74 was because owners from coast-to-coast were clamoring for his services. Still are.

It was the opinion of the late sports doctor Bob Kerlan that jockeys were the greatest athletes. They tested least in body fat and he pointed out that someone McCarron’s size--at 5 feet 2, 106 pounds--was spotting the horse an 1,100-pound pull in the weights. “They talk about a fighter being pound-for-pound the best in the business--but imagine if he had to spot his opponent 1,000 pounds!” Doc Kerlan used to point out. Of course, you don’t exactly fight a horse, but you are trying to get him to do something that is the last thing in the world he wants to do.

After you have shown you can win multiple races, the next test for a rider is performance in the classics. You can sweep the card at Louisville on Derby Day, but if you finish second in the Kentucky Derby you might as well not have been riding. They wrote poems about Earl Sande, not because of his overall performance (122 victories was his high year) but because he won three Kentucky Derbies.

McCarron was up to the challenge. He has won two Kentucky Derbies, two Belmonts and two Preaknesses. The Derby is considered the hardest race for a rider to win. Anything goes in that rodeo and a winner’s number has never been taken down for rough riding. Which may explain why Willie Hartack, for example, won it five times while some great riders have been hard put to win it at all. John Longden and Lafitt Pincay won it only once. Kent Desormeaux, who broke McCarron’s record when he posted 599 victories one year, has never won it. Ted Atkinson could never win it. Neither could Hawley.

McCarron’s ride on Alysheba at Louisville in 1987 is widely held to be one of the greatest Derby rides of all. Alysheba had to be handled masterfully in close quarters at the start, advanced skillfully to the far turn, only to stumble in the stretch. He clipped the heels of Bet Twice at the 3/16th pole, and was swerved into repeatedly by Bet Twice but persevered to win by three-quarters of a length. Trainer Jack Van Berg was to say the horse tried to find five ways to lose the race but McCarron wouldn’t let him.

They write no poems about him, but they’re honoring McCarron at the Oak Tree meeting at the refurbished Santa Anita track Saturday with a collectors’ ceramic stein with his likeness on it distributed free.

Then, on Nov. 4 at the Beverly Hilton, he will be saluted at a black-tie dinner with the Caritas Award, given by the Richstone Center For Abused Children.

McCarron has won more than 6,500 races. Only six others have won that many. His mounts have won $210 million.

He moves a horse up several lengths. He does the same for charities. And, with some seven broken bones in his career, he knows horseback is a dangerous place to be. So, with comedian Tim Conway, he has formed the Don MacBeth Memorial Fund for disabled jockeys, riders who found themselves going from a saddle to a wheelchair in one luckless stumble.

Damon Runyon wrote a poem about Sande, Longfellow wrote a poem about Paul Revere. Chris McCarron would have caught them both in the stretch.

* OAK TREE: Madame Pandit made a winner of trainer Ron McAnally in opening-day feature. C3