Sport: The Crocodile

Jockey Rae Johnstone is a sunken-cheeked little man of 43 with cold grey eyes. French horseplayers call him “the Crocodile” (“he comes from behind and eats them up”). He never looked more carnivorous than he did last week at Longchamps, as he trailed the leaders around the turn, and then crocodiled ahead to win France’s racing classic—the Grand Prix de Paris—by a length and a half.

Like Eddie Arcaro, the best of U.S. jockeys, the Crocodile has a way with horses and a knack of infuriating the fans.

In his first year (1921), he rode more winning mounts than any other jockey in Australia. Moving on to England, he dumfounded horseplayers by winning without using much whip. But bettors disliked him, because when the Crocodile saw he couldn’t win a race, he often stopped trying. “If the owner wants me to place, I try, but I don’t like to ride a horse into the ground for nothing.” English fans nicknamed him “brigand”; in France, he is called voleur (thief) more often than le roi des jockeys.

The best jockey in France, he made money fast and gambled it away until the day in 1940 when he married a nightclub dancer. He hasn’t been in a gambling casino since.

His Longchamps victory last week on My Love made him the first jockey in history to win all four of Europe’s big horse races the same year. He had already won the English Derby (on My Love), the Irish Derby (on Nathoo), the French Derby (on Bey).