The Cougar Calls It Quits

It was not the first time that Jockey John ("The Cougar") Pollard, 46, had retired from racing. He went through the motions in 1940, again in 1942, and 13 years later he was still booting them home. But the last time he called his old friend, former Racing Editor David Alexander, to announce that he was hanging up his silks, The Cougar seemed to mean it. Reasonably sure that the long (more than 30 years) career of one of the oldest active jockeys is over at last, Alexander recalls the bright highlights in the current issue of The Blood Horse.

"Even today," says Alexander, "Pollard makes me think of Huck Finn . .

He has a Puckish, freckled face, and his hair is as red as the racing silks of the late Charles S. Howard, which he once carried to the money-winning record of the world on a horse named Seabiscuit."

Louse It Up. Pollard grew up in Butte, Mont., spent his teens as a horse wrangler and ham-and-egg fighter in cow-town clubs. It was on Seabiscuit that he rode to fame. But during the summer of 1938, when the great bay horse was training for a race with Samuel D. Riddle's War Admiral, Pollard broke his left leg. "George Woolf, a nerveless rider who was called The Iceman,' was assigned the mount on Seabiscuit," says Alexander. "A few days before the race, a national network asked me to conduct a two-way radio program between Woolf in a Boston broadcasting studio and Pollard in his hospital room. I gave Pollard, whose leg was in traction, a carefully prepared script, but he dropped it on the floor at a crucial point of the broadcast . . . Woolf had just asked The Cougar how he should ride Seabiscuit in the match. 'Why, Georgie boy,' Pollard ad-libbed, 'just ride your usual race. Get left at the post and louse it up from there on in.' Woolf and Seabiscuit won despite Pollard's advice."

Pollard's leg failed to heal properly, and no one thought he would ever ride again. But Seabiscuit had one more race coming up before going to stud for good--the $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap--and Pollard was determined to ride him. Gimpy leg and all, he got the mount. Seabiscuit, too, had a bad leg. To Pollard, that made everything all right. "Pops and I have got four good legs between us," he cracked.

"The race meant more to [Pollard] than it did to Howard," as Alexander tells it. "He'd just been married a few months before, [his wife] was carrying her first child, and he was flat broke. He'd get at least $10,000 if he won."

Just a Great Big Noise. "For three-quarters of a mile it was just another horse race. Then, at the half-mile pole, Seabiscuit moved, hugging the rail. A horse named Whichcee came over on Seabiscuit sharply. The crowd of 80,000 seemed to hold its breath. For an instant the four-legged horse and the two-legged boy, with four good legs between them, seemed certain to go down. But Pollard had learned the hard way--in the Western bull rings--and managed to ease off. The Biscuit drew off to win . . . from his own stablemate, Kayak II. But it wasn't over yet . . . For two minutes Pollard sat uncertainly on Seabiscuit. The red board that signaled a claim of foul was up. The stewards disallowed the claim."

That night Pollard retired for the first time. Over a bottle of Scotch, instead of his favorite "bowwow wine" (brandy), he told Alexander just how he felt when that red board went up. "I felt just fine. I thought, if those dudes call me up in the stand and ask me questions, I'll sass 'em. This is one time I can get away with sassing 'em. There are 80,000 people here, and they all love me and Pops. If those dudes take our number down, the crowd will burn the stand -- with those dudes in it." Pollard sipped his drink and looked off into space. "You know," he said, "not a single one of those 80,000 people was making a sound . . ." Continues Alexander: "I thought about it, and he was right. The real drama hadn't been the 121 1/5 seconds it had taken Seabiscuit to run the mile and a quarter.

The drama had been the 120 seconds that a crippled boy sat on a crippled horse waiting for three men to decide whether he was, temporarily, the most famous figure in sports, or just another jock who'd ridden foul. When 80,000 people are cheering, it's just a great big noise. When 80,000 people are completely silent, it's damned impressive."

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