Pincay Collects 6,000th Victory

Laffit Pincay must have been paying attention to the jibe that Chris McCarron gave him Sunday, minutes after Pincay became the third jockey in history to win 6,000 career races.

Pincay, whose 5,999th win came aboard Image of Greatness in the fourth race at Santa Anita, returned in the fifth to win by 3 1/2 lengths with Doria’s Delight and join only Bill Shoemaker and Johnny Longden.

In the jockeys’ room after Pincay hit No. 6,000, McCarron cracked: “If he was any good, he would have had 7,000 by now.”

One race after he got Doria’s Delight, a 4-year-old Canadian-bred gelding, to the finish line in wire-to-wire fashion, Pincay began working on No. 7,000. He won the seventh race with Champion Pilot. No. 6,001. Then he won the ninth race with Melodisk. No. 6,002. Only darkness and the fact that Santa Anita runs but nine races a day kept Pincay from moving even closer to the retired Longden, who is second on the list with 6,032 wins.

Shoemaker, who started the day with the record of 8,441 wins, isn’t exactly looking over his shoulder, but to play it safe the 53-year-old veteran rode Lord at War to a 2 1/2-length victory in the $265,200 San Antonio Handicap before 54,304 fans.

The 38-year-old Pincay won his 6,000th four weeks to the day after his wife Linda died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“All the way down the stretch (in the Doria’s Delight race), I kept seeing Linda’s face in my thoughts,” Pincay said. “I started to cry a little, knowing how much this would have meant to her.”

Pincay was never one for detail--another rider remembered how a $15,000 check once laid in his jockeys’ room trunk for more than a year--but Linda was. She kept track of his wins and had reminded him when he reached the 5,900 mark late last year. Pincay had said last week that he was dedicating his 6,000th win to Linda.

The muscular Panamanian got it on the 26,903rd mount of a career that started in Panama City in 1964, the same year Shoemaker was reaching the 5,000 mark.

Shoemaker rode No. 6,000 when he was just past 24,000 mounts. It took Longden about 32,000 mounts to reach 6,000 wins.

With the the strength of a lumberjack, the skills of a matador and the determination of a safecracker, Pincay rides for all trainers--at least those lucky enough to obtain his services--and there wasn’t a conditioner in Sunday’s crowd who wasn’t pulling for him.

The 6,000th win came for trainer Darrell Vienna. Pincay rode a colt for Joe Manzi in the next race, and in the walking ring Manzi said: “It would have been nice if he could have gotten that big one on this horse.”

As it turned out, Pincay was second with Manzi’s Lord’n Ruler, but his surge to 6,000 and beyond has lifted him into sixth place in the Santa Anita standings with 26 wins on the season. That’s not his usual niche--he’s been the Santa Anita champion 11 times--but it’s an extraordinary position for a rider who was hit by illness and a suspension early in the meeting and who took off two weeks after his wife’s death.

“Everybody has been so good to me since the tragedy,” Pincay said. “I’m glad I could do this for all the good fans and people I work with around here. I’m glad it (No. 6,000) was an easy ride. I had time to get excited as we got close to the wire.”

There was speculation that Pincay, who must diet assiduously to stay at a heavy riding weight of 117 pounds, might fall apart after Linda’s death, but he has returned with all the gusto that’s been the hallmark of his career.

McCarron, who’s nearing a milestone of his own, being just 13 wins short of 4,000, was the first jockey to draw alongside of Pincay as the riders pulled up their horses after Doria’s Delight’s victory. McCarron tapped Pincay on the rear end with his whip as he went by.

In the winner’s circle, to a loud ovation, Pincay received a sterling silver tray and a placard that he’ll have the rest of the jockeys autograph.

“It takes a lot of work and dedication to get 6,000 wins,” Shoemaker said.

In a couple of years, Pincay says, his work and dedication will be channelled in another direction, training the thoroughbreds he’s found so comfortable to ride.

If he’s a man of his word, Shoemaker’s 8,000 is safe.

Horse Racing Notes

Lord at War’s win in the San Antonio Handicap was his fourth straight in a stake and his fifth in seven U.S. starts. He was 3-for-3 as a 3-year-old in Argentina in 1983. Trainer Charlie Whittingham said before the race that Lord at War is the kind of horse that can win the Santa Anita Handicap (March 3), and Sunday’s win sets the stage for an appealing showdown with Precisionist, who swept the Strub series. Both horses like to highball it out of the gate and despite hot fractions, Lord at War was never threatened in the stretch. . . . Whittingham plans to run three horses in the Big ‘Cap--Lord at War, Greinton and Hail Bold King, who made a move from last place Sunday and hung to finish third. . . . Trainer Bobby Frankel was pleased with Al Mamoon’s second-place finish. “Not bad, was it, for a horse who was off four months and had only one race under his belt going in,” Frankel said. . . . The win was Bill Shoemaker’s 916th in a stake and his 206th in a $100,000 race. . . . Shoemaker will have to choose between Lord at War and Greinton if both run in the Big ‘Cap. . . . Peter Perkins, the Paris, Ky., man who owns Lord at War, bred both the winner and Al Mamoon. “We sold Al Mamoon to the Arabs and then they sold him (to Bert Firestone and Edmund Gann),” Perkins said. . . . Trainer Darrell Vienna said the only thing that might prevent The Rogers Four from running in next Saturday’s San Rafael Stakes is the possible sale of the horse this week. . . . Floating Reserve and Right Con are scheduled to run in the San Rafael, but Tank’s Prospect and Skywalker are likely to wait for another day. . . . Trainer Wayne Lukas says he won’t run Eclipse Award winner Life’s Magic in next Sunday’s Santa Margarita Invitational Handicap because the weight of 125 pounds isn’t acceptable. Adored was given high weight of 126. “I don’t think he’ll get much less anywhere he goes with the filly,” said Santa Anita racing secretary Lou Eilken, part of a four-man panel that determined the weights. “Maybe he might get 124 someplace. But will you take a horse 3,000 miles (to the East) just for 16 ounces?” . . . John Henry, 1984 Horse of the Year, has been sent to Galway Downs for two weeks before he resumes training for a summer campaign. . . . Pat Day is the winner of the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, decided for the first time in a national poll of riders. . . . Day won Sunday’s Phoenix Gold Cup at Turf Paradise with Charging Falls. Flying Back finished second and Hula Blaze was third.