Who Needs the Derby?

By Roger Kahn

Jumbo jets screamed down through hairy April clouds, and Aqueduct looked gray and barren. The place is functional, not aesthetic, and now that off-track betting presides in New York City, crowds that once pressed to see horseflesh and jockeys' silks have shriveled. Half deserted in a spattering rain. Aqueduct was no classic backdrop for young triumph.

But this day, as most days lately, the place was alive with wonder. Stevie Cauthen, the most exciting 16-year-old jockey anybody can remember, was continuing to transform elderly platers into Pegasuses. "The kid is so hot he's got three agents," said Patrick W. Lynch, a closet intellectual who is a vice president of the New York Racing Association. "Lenny Goodman gets him his mounts. Mark McCormack, who handled people like Jack Nicklaus, sets up side deals. Swifty Lazar, Nixon's agent, is arranging the book."

"What book?" I said.

"His autobiography."

"He's 16. How can he write an autobiography?"

"If I understand the book business these days," Mr. Lynch said, "the first three chapters will be about his sex life."

Below Lynch's office, Cauthen was winning the first race with a stretch drive on My Dad's Cross. In the second race, he brought a five-year-old mare called Donizetta up from seventh to third. After that, he won the third with Joanne's Fling and the fourth with Sparkling Topaz. Since December, Master Cauthen, who weighs 92 Ibs., has been winning roughly 30% of his mounts. That is not supposed to happen in horse racing, where a 15% winning average is extraordinary. As far as anyone remembers, nothing like it has happened at a major track before.

The interplay between horse and rider is complex and ultimately mystic. Unless thrown, a rider cannot finish ahead of his horse, and certain racing sophisticates regard betting jockeys as a prelude to bankruptcy. But now comes Cauthen, apparently able to win races aboard a healthy Chihuahua. Track professionals analyze and shrug.

Cauthen sits well. Driving a horse, he comes close to the idealized jockey who is "tattooed to the animal's back." He has balance, vision, judgment, confidence, courage. "But ultimately," Willie Shoemaker, the great veteran rider once said, "the secret is in the reins. In the end it's between the rider's hands and the horse's mouth."

Greeting the boy, Stevie Cauthen, you find yourself shaking the hands of a powerful man. We met in the jockey's room at Aqueduct, where Cauthen was warming up for a day's work by playing Ping Pong. He is brown-haired, fresh-faced and tiny, except for his hands. He has not grown since he was 14.

"I like horses," Cauthen said. "I played a year of Little League baseball, and my high school in Kentucky, Walton-Verona, isn't far from Cincinnati. It was full of baseball freaks and basketball freaks. But I liked horses. They're creatures of habit and smarter than most people think. My mother trains horses and my dad's a blacksmith, and they have some acreage, so I grew up with horses and horse people. It takes me about five minutes now to get the feel of a new horse. I love New York racing. I love riding the well-bred horses, the high-grade horses here."

"How does it feel to be so much in demand at 16?"

"It's all right. People come around. You came around when I was winning at Ping Pong. But it's all right."

"What would you like to be doing most?"

He thought briefly. "What I'm doing," Cauthen said. "Riding well-bred horses in New York."

His life is carefully ordered. He lives with a trainer's family on Long Island and is finishing high school through correspondence courses. He telephones his parents every day. Since December he has earned about $200,000. He cannot explain his success. He is a child and he is a man, and he is capable of magic on horseback perhaps because he still believes in magic.

"Two things can stop the kid, but only two," one particularly wise race-track hand suggested.

"First is the ladies. The big blondes are out there waiting for the kid to grow up. I've seen more riders mess themselves up at night than in the day. Then he's got to go down. I mean he'll have some bad falls. Eddie Arcaro used to say you weren't a real jockey until you'd broken a collarbone--five times."

But for now Stevie is neither stoppable nor flappable. "What about the Kentucky Derby?" I asked Lenny Goodman, Cauthen's on-track agent.

"What about the Derby?" he said.

"Will Stevie ride in it?"

"If he had the right mount, but only if he had the right mount." Goodman considered his cigar. "Don't take this wrong, but right now Stevie Cauthen don't need any Derby."

I wandered off. The tote board blinked The kid had brought a long shot home second. A few fans stood in the rain applauding. "Thank you, Stevie," someone called. "Thank you very much." The tone was gratitude approaching supplication.

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