Sport: No. 3,000

Ten years ago, after a rough & tumble career that earned him more than his share of spills and quarrels, Jockey Eddie Arcaro was brought before a board of stewards. Did he, they asked, deliberately try to spill a rival rider? Arcaro, who had been rammed at the start of the race, answered candidly: “I’d of killed the sonofa-bitch if I could.” Arcaro was suspended for a year.

The experience taught him a lesson: a good jockey must control his temper. Since then, Arcaro has become the No. 1 money-winning rider in the world. Starting in 1938 on Lawrin, he won the Kentucky Derby five times, the Belmont Stakes five, the Preakness four. In 1941, he hit the Triple Crown jackpot with Whirlaway and again in 1948 with Citation. Last week at Chicago, Arcaro, 36, on a horse named Ascent, passed another milestone: winner of 3,000 races, a record for an American-born jockey.*

* Britain’s Gordon Richards, 47, has 4,476 winners; the U.S.’s British-born Johnny Longdera, 42, has 4,033.