Bobby Ussery is not a classy rider. He shifts around in the saddle, stretches too far forward, and arches too high off the horse. Fans of a bygone smoothy like Eddie Arcaro are appalled. "A real butcher on style," they say. Then they line up at the pari-mutuel windows to bet whatever horse has Ussery up.
The thing is, the butcher wins—on all kinds of horses, on all kinds of tracks. "I try," he explains precisely, "to get my horse to the wire first." Fortnight ago, at New York's Aqueduct, Ussery booted home an astonishing five winners in seven mounts, followed this two days later with a triple. Last week he was a triple winner again, won seven other races, bringing his season's record on the country's toughest, most competitive track to 131, and making him undisputed top jock at the Big A. (Johnny Rotz, in second place, has only 79 wins.) Ussery has never won the Kentucky Derby. But day in and day out, one out of every four horses he rides triggers the winner's photo; one out of every two at least places or shows.
"Make 'Em Win." Not too many years ago, other jockeys didn't want a horse Ussery had just ridden. Ussery maintains that 90% of the horses he rides don't really run to win. They dog it along the rail, or bear out wide to get away from the pounding pack. "You just have to make 'em win anyway," he says. And in the early days, for Ussery that often meant flogging and kicking a horse to the finish line by brute force. Rage and frustration still get the better of him once in a while. At Aqueduct one race last week, he had the lead at the three-quarter-mile mark, and then the horse went into a dead fade as the rest of the field tore by. Ussery was still fruitlessly, angrily whipping as he came in a long last.
But at 28, Ussery has learned to use tactics as well as tack. No jockey is shrewder at rating a short-winded speed horse on the lead; few are more accomplished at sitting chilly on a stretch runner, picking the instant to make a move. And when it comes to a photo finish, he knows every trick in the book: flicking a horse gently under the chin to get its head up at the wire, dropping the reins to let the horse's neck stretch out. "I've matured," he says. "With my attitude real sour like it was before, it was no good. Now I'm relaxed when I ride. You get better results that way."
Ussery had reason to be sour as a boy in Vian, Okla. He and his four brothers, two sisters and mother lived on relief checks after his father left home. In the seventh grade, Robert Ussery, aged 13, dropped out and started pulling his own weight. He shined shoes in the winter, picked spinach in the summer—and grimly made up his mind to get shoes of his own and the kind of spinach you can spend. As soon as he figured out that 5 ft. 3 in. was as tall as he was going to be, he gave up the idea of basketball, and by 16 had his first winner at the track.