Pincay or Shoemaker? Only Wins Are the Same

Whom would you rather have on a horse, Laffit Pincay Jr. or Bill Shoemaker? Don’t ask me. I’m not qualified to answer. I’m too smart to be a thoroughbred owner, not smart enough to be a trainer.

As smart as trainers are, though, I couldn’t find one who could answer this question. Or maybe they are too smart to give a simple answer. From Wayne Lukas to Bill Spawr to Darrell Vienna to Roger Stein, all said it would depend on the horse. Just as there are horses for courses, there are also jockeys for horses.

Shoemaker and Pincay wouldn’t be the jockey for many of the same horses because of the contrast in their styles. They are as different as a lullaby and a John Philip Sousa march, pebbles skipping across a placid lake and a cannonball from the high diving board, Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson, Gale Sayers and Jim Brown.

Of course, if you could ask the sport’s other experts, the horses, they would choose Shoemaker. Overwhelmingly. With Shoemaker’s retirement in 1990, Jim Murray wrote that horses had lost their best friend. Shoemaker was as smooth as the silks he wore, the ultimate riding machine. Horses didn’t know they were being ridden when he was on board, just steered. “He seduced them,” Vienna says.

Pincay, who tied Shoemaker’s victory total of 8,833 Thursday, is the bettors’ best friend.

In Pincay’s younger, more impetuous days, they might have criticized him for trying to barge through an opening between two horses that wasn’t actually an opening or getting boxed out by looking for daylight on the rail that wasn’t actually daylight.

But no one has ever accused him of not trying to win. He rides hard every time. Shoemaker got everything out of a horse it had to give; Pincay gets more. If the horse can’t quite endure until he reaches the finish line, Pincay will “pick him up and carry him across,” Lukas said.

Pincay is that strong.

Shoemaker relied on finesse because he had to. He is 4 feet 11 and usually weighed in at 95 pounds, seldom more. “He could eat a double cheeseburger and not gain an ounce,” Stein said.

Pincay has suffered more for his art. He is 5-1 and has one of the best physiques in sports, the source of his tremendous power, but he has also had to fight his weight. Pills, vomiting and fad diets led to depression and alcohol before he discovered a strict dietary regimen in recent years, enabling him to maintain at 113 pounds.

Despite their differences, both produced extraordinary records. Shoemaker won 8,883 times in 40 years. It took Pincay 35 years to reach that number. But Shoemaker rode fewer races. His winning percentage is 21.9%; Pincay’s is 19.8%.

Beyond the racetrack, Shoemaker is more famous. He is as close as the jockey colony has to a Babe Ruth. But that has less to do with Pincay’s talent than his timing.

Shoemaker’s prime was also horse racing’s. When he was the leading money winner among U.S. jockeys for a record seven consecutive years, 10 times in 14 years, during the ‘50s and ‘60s, the Kentucky Derby was on a plateau in American sports alongside the World Series.

There was no Super Bowl, the NCAA Final Four had yet to become the chosen event of the office pool, the NBA finals weren’t nationally televised except on weekends, the World Wrestling Federation was beyond the realm of imagination.

If Shoemaker didn’t have to compete as much for media attention, neither did he have to compete as much as Pincay does for rides. Shoemaker was the king of the West, Eddie Arcaro of the East. The twain did meet in the big races, for which they usually got their choice of the best horses. Shoemaker won 11 Triple Crown races, four in the Kentucky Derby. He would have won a fifth if he hadn’t stood in the saddle before reaching the finish line with Gallant Man in 1957.

Pincay proved to the East Coast that he could ride, leading the jockey standings at Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga, but he has chosen for most of his career to remain in Southern California. His family is here. So are some of the biggest purses.

The latter attracted many of the best jockeys. Besides Pincay, there are three other Hall of Famers riding regularly at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar.

As a result, no one dominates as Shoemaker did. Pincay at his best was always on the list of jockeys considered for Triple Crown horses, but it was a longer list. Still, he won the Kentucky Derby once, aboard Swale in 1984, and finished as the runner-up five times. He also won three Belmont Stakes.

Although he was clearly the dominant rider in the ‘70s, leading the national money standings six times, he couldn’t overcome Shoemaker’s reputation. When Ron Franklin was replaced as 1979 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Spectacular Bid’s jockey after the Triple Crown campaign, Shoemaker got the call.

But Pincay got the call that year after Steve Cauthen lost his ride on 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed. He won his final seven starts by a total of 29 1/2 lengths, including a victory over Shoemaker and Spectacular Bid in the ’79 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park that clinched horse-of-the-year honors for Affirmed.

Shoemaker and Pincay might have had a rivalry, but they were never rivals.

Pincay calls Shoemaker his idol. “I’d have a horse I couldn’t do anything with, then see Shoemaker win on him,” Pincay says. “It amazed me.” He also credits Shoemaker for giving him perspective in his younger, headstrong days, taking him aside to tell him that not every loss was a failure.

Shoemaker calls Pincay “the greatest rider I’ve ever seen and the greatest person I’ve ever known.”

Who’s better? The trainers are right. There is no easy answer.

But if I were a spectator at a rodeo, I know which I’d rather see riding a bronco. Pincay, easy. He would ride that horse until he melted, scoring maximum points and providing maximum excitement. Shoemaker would talk him down, get him to stop bucking. Afterward, the bronco would probably invite Shoemaker home to meet his family.

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.

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Tale of the Tape

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PINCAY SHOEMAKER 5-1 Height 4-11 117 Weight 95 35 Years riding 40 44,631 Mounts 40,350 8,833 Wins 8,833 19.8 Win % 21.9 $210,017,996 Money $123,375,524 1 Kentucky Derbies Won 4

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