Another Feather in McCarron’s Cap

Riding for the last time outside California, 47-year-old jockey Chris McCarron won two races Friday night at Lone Star Park to clinch first place in the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn.’s All-Star Jockey Championship.

After McCarron won the last of four races in the competition, he and his 11 rivals squirted one another with water bottles in the winner’s circle. McCarron, thinking the horseplay was over, turned his back and then someone emptied a bucket of water on him.

Ending a career that started in 1974, McCarron will ride three races today and six more Sunday at Hollywood Park.

In his last race, he will be aboard Came Home, the favorite in the $100,000 Affirmed Handicap.

The two victories at Grand Prairie, Texas, on Friday boosted his career total to 7,139, which ranks him sixth on the list. With a victory worth 12 points, McCarron finished with 24 points to overtake Edgar Prado, who had a win and a second-place finish and went into the final race with 18 points. Prado’s mount finished last in the final race. Mike Smith and David Flores also won races and finished in a tie for third place with 12 points apiece.

The 12 jockeys in the competition had a combined total of more than 50,000 victories and their mounts have earned $1.4 billion. McCarron won the first race with favored Prized Amberpro, a 5-year-old mare who beat colts going six furlongs. McCarron looped the field on the turn for home as Prized Amberpro beat Coat Of Armor by a neck and paid $5.40.

McCarron’s mounts finished ninth and 11th in the next two races. But in the finale he rode Yoto Speakes, an 8-year-old ghostly white gelding who made up 3 1/2 lengths from the eighth pole home to win by 1 1/4 lengths. Yoto Speakes paid $17.

“There’s no way you can even dream it’d work out this good,” McCarron said. “That would be awful greedy. I think this will make it much more difficult on Sunday. But I’ve made up my mind. The adrenaline through the stretch [with Yoto Speakes] was unbelievable.”

McCarron has never found a track where he couldn’t win. Since breaking in on the Maryland circuit, he has been at the top of the game. As a teenager, he rode 546 winners in 1974, breaking the record of 515 that was set by California-based Sandy Hawley in 1973.

That might have been a tough act to follow, but McCarron was up to all the encores. Having conquered Maryland, he shifted to the big leagues of Southern California in 1978 with nary a blip. His horses have earned a record $264.1 million. He was a first-ballot inductee into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1989.

A week ago today, as McCarron puts it, he “pulled the plug.” He announced that Sunday’s card at Hollywood Park would end his career. When he first discussed the details surrounding his retirement announcement with his wife, McCarron suggested that Friday night at Lone Star would be a suitable forum for the windup.

“Chris,” Judy McCarron said, “you’ve just got to have your last ride at Hollywood Park.”

McCarron agreed.

“I was beginning to lose my desire,” McCarron said before Friday’s races. “My enthusiasm for the job had begun to wane. I had told myself several years ago that if that ever happened, I would get out. To go on wouldn’t have been fair to my clients [horse owners and trainers], the public or myself. With guys like Gary Stevens, Laffit Pincay, Eddie Delahoussaye and Kent Desormeaux to go up against every day, it’s difficult to compete even when you’ve got your head screwed on 100%.”

McCarron was to have ridden Ask Me No Secrets in today’s Vanity Handicap, but the filly is ill and wasn’t entered. In Sunday’s Affirmed, McCarron will be reunited with Came Home. He has ridden the colt in all eight of his races, including a victory in the Santa Anita Derby and a sixth in the Kentucky Derby in the last two starts. Gobi Dan, Kamsack, Tracemark, Fonz’s, Calkins Road, Laffit, and True Phenomenon are also entered in the Affirmed, which McCarron first won with Journey At Sea in 1982.

McCarron has said that it’s unlikely he’ll move on to a training career.

“I’m going to take a rest,” he said. “I’m tired. Not tired physically, but tired mentally.”