He Made Best of His Rides

In 1982, less than two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, Eddie Delahoussaye appeared to have lost his mount. He had finished a badly beaten second with Gato Del Sol in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, and the gray colt’s ownership wanted a new jockey for Churchill Downs.

The late Eddie Gregson, who trained Gato Del Sol, was still in Delahoussaye’s corner. Gregson knew that Delahoussaye’s expertise with trailing horses fit Gato Del Sol like the proverbial glove, but Gregson’s talking points were flimsy. Since winning the Del Mar Futurity with Delahoussaye, Gato Del Sol had gone more than seven months without a victory and was on a seven-race losing streak. He had been labeled a plodder, a horse who always left himself with too much to do in the stretch.

Bill Shoemaker was available. Shoemaker had won the Derby three times and ridden in the race 21 times. Delahoussaye was a newcomer to the Derby, although in his second try he had just missed with the longshot Woodchopper in 1981.

Shoemaker had ridden Cassaleria, a one-eyed horse, to a ho-hum sixth-place finish in the Santa Anita Derby. Gato Del Sol, with Delahoussaye, had been an equally dull fourth in the same race.

A call was placed to Shoemaker, with the offer of Gato Del Sol in the Derby.

“What’s wrong with Delahoussaye?” Shoemaker asked. “He’s a hell of a rider. He’s just right for that horse. I don’t know why you’d want to take him off.”

Leone Peters and Arthur Hancock, the owners-breeders of Gato Del Sol, gave Delahoussaye his 11th-hour reprieve. Several days later, breaking from the 18th post position in a 19-horse field, Gato Del Sol made up 16 lengths and won the Derby by 2 1/2. At 21-1, he was the first horse to win the Derby from outside No. 14 in 53 years. Shoemaker finished eighth on Star Gallant.

In the aftermath of his injury-accelerated retirement this week, Delahoussaye, 51, has been reminiscing about Gato Del Sol and all the other famous horses he rode. With 6,384 wins, it’s a roster that stretches from Santa Anita to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where Chris McCarron, a retiree last year, introduced Delahoussaye as a fellow hall-of-fame inductee in 1993.

“Eddie,” McCarron said that day, “now that you’ve accomplished everything, why don’t you hang it up, and give the rest of us a little chance?”

Roving Boy was supposed to be Delahoussaye’s Kentucky Derby horse in 1983. After a jockey wins a Derby, he turns into the no-hit pitcher trying to match Johnny Vander Meer, who threw consecutive no-hitters in 1938. Before the early 1980s, Jimmy Winkfield and Ron Turcotte were the only 20th-century jockeys to have won the Derby in successive years. Isaac Murphy scored his consecutive wins when gas lamps were the fashion.

In 1982, two years before the dawn of the Breeders’ Cup era, Roving Boy and Delahoussaye had marched through most of the important races for 2-year-olds in California. They had won the Del Mar Futurity, the Norfolk at Santa Anita and the Hollywood Futurity, beating the hard-trying Desert Wine each time.

Roving Boy was voted best 2-year-old in the country, but in January 1983, as the late Joe Manzi was training him up to his seasonal debut, the colt broke down in a workout at Santa Anita.

By early April, Delahoussaye had landed on Sunny’s Halo, whose trainer, David Cross, had been using a different jockey every time the colt ran. Sunny’s Halo and Delahoussaye won the Arkansas Derby, but Angel Cordero was still angling for a Derby mount. Cross might have switched riders too, but Cordero offended him, reportedly asking for a $25,000 appearance fee, first-class airfare from New York and other perks. Cross kept Delahoussaye, who, dodging another bullet, won that second Derby.

No gloater, Delahoussaye adhered to a mind-set by simply soldiering on. Five years later at Churchill Downs, Louie Roussel, who owned and trained Risen Star, treated Delahoussaye like a bug boy instead of a dual Derby winner. A jockey with five cents’ worth of ego would have stormed off. Roussel brought Delahoussaye to Louisville four days before the race, with the proviso that he could ride the horse in the Derby if he didn’t botch a workout. Delahoussaye got the mount, and although Risen Star didn’t win the Derby, he did win the Preakness and the Belmont.

After that, Roussel and the jockey battled over whether Delahoussaye would be paid his $100,000 share of Risen Star’s $1-million Triple Crown bonus. Through it all, Delahoussaye kept to the high road.

“I’ve known Louie for a long time,” he said. “This is just Louie being Louie. That’s the way he is.”

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Bosque Redondo was euthanized this week. The 6-year-old had been recovering from surgery after breaking his right ankle last year following a fifth-place finish in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar. Bosque Redondo, winner of last year’s San Bernardino Handicap at Santa Anita, won six of 17 starts and earned $478,470.