FILE--This is a 1951 file photo of Eddie Arcaro, who rode Citation to the Triple Crown in 1948 . Arcaro, who rode Whirlaway and Citation to Triple Crowns and won the Kentucky Derby five times, died Friday, Nov. `14, 1997. He was 81. Nicknamed ``The Master,'' Arcaro came into prominence as a rider in the mid-1930s and continued near the top of his profession until his retirement in 1961.AP Photo/file

No jockey better than Arcaro

Web posted November 16, 1997

Associated Press

The title of his autobiography was as a perfect as an Eddie Arcaro race: I Ride to Win!

To Arcaro, that meant winning with a longshot as well as a favorite, and that attitude carried him to horse racing glory - and sometimes into trouble with racing officials, especially early in his brilliant career.

Arcaro, who died Friday of cancer at age 81, retired in 1961, but his name remained magical because he transcended his sport.

His death will not take away the magic.

Even today, there are comments such as, ``He rides like Arcaro,'' or ``He's gonna be another Arcaro.'' These often are said and written by people who never saw Arcaro ride.

But Joe Hirsch, the executive columnist for the Daily Racing Form, saw Arcaro ride many times. He also saw all of the other top jockeys of the second half of the 20th century, and to him there has been only one Arcaro.

``He was absolutely the best,'' said Hirsch, who joined the Form in 1948 and began writing from the track in 1954. ``He retired in 1962 and I still haven't seen anybody ride like him.''

He rode for 31 years, won 4,779 races and his mounts earned $30,039,563. Statistics, however, often are meaningful only when comparing athletes of the same era. Many jockeys have won more races and money, but only Arcaro was called ``The Master.''

Of his reputation, Arcaro once said, ``I've been on many of the best horses. Take the best horse in any race and put any one of a dozen or more riders on him, and he'll come through.''

When you can do it like Arcaro, however, you get the chance to ride horses capable of compiling these kinds of numbers: five wins in the Kentucky Derby, six in the Preakness Stakes, six in the Belmont Stakes, 10 in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, nine in the Wood Memorial and eight in the Suburban Handicap. He rode two of the 11 Triple Crown winners - Whirlaway in 1941 and Citation in 1948.

Then there was the 1955 match-race victory on Nashua over Swaps, ridden by Bill Shoemaker, who had beaten Nashua in the Kentucky Derby.

Arcaro had physical strength and agility, cunning and intelligence, and could get the best out of horse.

``Seventy percent of the horses don't want to win,'' he said. ``Horses are like people. Everyone doesn't have the ambition to knock himself out to succeed. Many horses will dog it if you let them get away with it. Even horses with a reputation.''

Arcaro began riding in 1931 in an era before races were filmed for viewing by the stewards, and jockeys got away with everything they could.

``The riding style of Eddie Arcaro has ameliorated considerably in recent years, but it was originally modeled on Bronco Nagurski,'' Joe Palmer, racing writer for the New York Herald Tribune, wrote in a piece in the collection This Was Racing, published in 1953.

``If a jockey showed the slightest trace of cowardice, it could get awfully rough out there,'' Arcaro said in This Was Racing, written with Jack O'Hara in 1951. ``You were competing with men who were aware that their own particular suns were fading, and they resented you moving into the places they would leave. They fought you and you fought them back.''

Arcaro, an affable man with a sense of humor and knack for telling stories when he had both feet on the ground, never quit fighting when he rode, but he did learn to control the temper that once carried him far beyond the rules.

In the fall of 1942, Arcaro put another jockey over the inner rail after that rider had cut off Arcaro earlier in the race. On Sept. 28 of that year, Arcaro's license was revoked.

After almost a year, Helen Whitney, owner of Greentree Stable, who was dying, wrote to William Woodward Sr., chairman of the Jockey Club. She asked him to reinstate Arcaro because she wanted to see him ride again in her colors before she died.

Eddie Arcaro was reinstated Sept. 19, 1943, and rode into legend.