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Turcotte rode his first race as an apprentice jockey in 1961. The following year, he posted 180 victories to become Canada's top jockey. The muscular little rider moved to the U.S. in 1964, and has guided his mounts to more than $1,000,000 in total purses every year since. Last year his 10% share of his horses' winnings came to $278,000. Now a rock-hard 112 Ibs., he credits his wife Gaetane's calorie-conscious cooking with helping him to keep slim. His old lumberjack's breakfast menu of eggs, flapjacks, beans, meat and a slab of cold dried fat back is only a memory. For spiritual replenishment, he periodically packs his wife and their three children into the family motor camper and escapes to the Canadian wilderness.
Despite his triumphs, he admits to few pretensions about his importance in the saddle. "The horse does the running," he says. "The biggest mistake a rider can make is to feel that he's more important than his horse and not give him credit for intelligence."