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Carroll Shilling, winner of the 1912 Kentucky Derby, and considered by many the most inspired horseman who ever held a pair of reins, has been in & out of sanitariums for alcoholism in recent years. Buddy Ensor, after losing many a bout with the bottle, died last winter in New York City. Laverne Fator, perhaps the iciest jockey who ever rode a horse, killed himself a few years ago. Tod Sloan, who made and squandered over a million dollars, ended up wheedling dimes from street crowds, billed as "the strangest dwarf in the world."*
Troubleshooter. Trainer Ben Jones, whose business for 40-odd years has been to know good jockeys, and who has watched .the best of them, says that Eddie Arcaro is the best he has seen since Carroll Shilling. Why? B.A. doesn't rightly know: "It's like playing a piano. Some have a better touch than others."
There is more to it than that. All the good ones, like good piano players, must also have rhythm. Says Arcaro: "You've got to make the horse think you're part of him. You sit right tight and dig your hands into his neck. And when he drives, you drive, and when he comes back you come back with him. That's the only secret I know about helping a horse, and it's no secret." He might have added that a great jockey, like any champion, must have guts.
Arcaro showed all these qualities one day last February at Santa Anita, aboard an iron-grey stallion named Talon. He was last going into the far turn, with 17 horses ahead of him. He whipped and drove the horse through holes that looked impassable. Then, with a spectacular finish, he won the $50,000 San Antonio Handicap. The next day, watching a newsreel of the race, Arcaro shivered at the chances he had taken.
He is a sly hand at diagnosing "trouble" horses. Seven years ago, Arcaro got an SOS call from Ben Jones in Louisville, four days before the Derby. Whirlaway had Ben worried; he wouldn't go around turns. The more other jockeys fought him, the more he drifted wide. Trouble-shooter Arcaro experimented in a workout; he took a long rein and let Whirlaway follow another horse around the turn. It worked so well that Whirlaway (Arcaro up) won the Derby by eight lengths in the fastest time it has ever been run.
This year Arcaro has won two of the four big $100,000 races run so far (the Santa Anita Handicap and the Derby). He doesn't shine as brilliantly in the cheap run-of-the-mill races, on which 26 million people do most of their betting. Says he: "Cheap horses don't need management—they just run."
Ten-Percenters. In 16 turbulent years Eddie Arcaro has ridden 11,868 races. He has won 2,223 of them. One reason why Eddie Arcaro is still at it (the average jockey lasts only four or five years) is that he seldom has to visit steam boxes to keep his weight down. Most jockeys resort to all the tricks, including taking cathartics, to lose weight, and sometimes lose their health as well.
Like a wealthy New York businessman,