HORSE RACING : If Desormeaux Rides, He Wins

When Jim Bouton, the former pitcher, was a sportscaster in New York, it seemed to Bouton that basketball star Rick Barry was always scoring 30 points a game.

One night Bouton started his program by saying: “Rick Barry’s team didn’t play tonight, but Rick still scored 30 points.”

If Maryland sportscasters are tempted to make similar announcements about Kent Desormeaux, one of them could have said Wednesday: “Laurel was closed today, but Kent Desormeaux still rode three winners.”

By the end of the year, Desormeaux shouldn’t need whimsical wins to break one of racing’s oldest records: the 546 wins that Chris McCarron registered in 1974.

Desormeaux has won 489 races, and because of the favorites he frequently gets to ride, the 19-year-old jockey is a cinch to replace McCarron in the record book if he can avoid injuries and suspensions in the next two months.

“I’ve got to root for him because it’s a goal that Kent set for himself two years ago, and he’s worked awful hard to get there,” McCarron said. “Last year, he was out for the record, too, but he got some suspensions.

“If he gets my record, it’ll be like losing a good friend, because for 15 years this has been something that I’ve been able to boast about.”

In 1974, McCarron was an apprentice who didn’t win the first race of his career until Feb. 9. McCarron remembers having only 20 or 30 wins by the end of March, but got hot at Pimlico, averaging about two a day for two months.

By then, his agent, Eddie Kinlaw, proposed that they shoot for Sandy Hawley’s record of 515 wins, set the year before.

“I thought Eddie was nuts,” McCarron said. “He wanted me to ride seven days a week, filling in the dark days in Maryland by going to Delaware Park and Monmouth Park.”

By the end of the year, McCarron was also riding at Penn National, a night track about 100 miles from Baltimore. McCarron rode six winners in a day five times that year--twice at Penn National and once apiece at Pimlico, Bowie and Laurel--breaking Hawley’s record on Dec. 16.

Darrel McHargue was second in the standings in 1974 with 405 wins, followed by Hawley with 373. Before Hawley set the record in 1973, it was held for 20 years by Bill Shoemaker, who won 485.

“I’m surprised my record has lasted as long as it has,” McCarron said. “Now, with all the racing, a jock can ride seven days a week all year long.

“Those 546 wins are the best thing I’ve ever done in racing. I’ve done things that were more thrilling, like winning the Kentucky Derby (with Alysheba in 1987) and getting elected to the Hall of Fame (this year), but I’m awfully proud of what I did in 1974, because I did it only having one-fifteenth of the experience that I have now.”

For years, McCarron had license plates that read: “546 WINS.”

McCarron remembers serving three week-long suspensions in 1974, but he still rode in 2,199 races, a total not surpassed until Chris Antley appeared in 2,335 races in 1985, when he led the country with 469 wins.

Desormeaux will probably ride in about 2,200 races this year. He has won with 25.6% of his mounts. McCarron won with 24.8% in 1974.

Desormeaux has a better chance of breaking the record than he has of being voted the Eclipse Award for best jockey. Neither Hawley nor McCarron won the award--although McCarron received the honors for best apprentice--in his record-breaking year. Laffit Pincay, whose horses earned an unprecedented $4 million in purses in both 1973 and 1974, won the Eclipse both of those years.

Eclipse voters--turf writers, Daily Racing Form representatives and track racing secretaries--usually look toward the jockeys who lead the money list and win the major stakes races. Through last Sunday, Desormeaux was ninth on the money list with purses of $7.3 million and he hasn’t won a major race all year. Pat Day was No. 1 in money with $11.7 million, followed by Jose Santos with $10.6 million and Pincay with $9.3 million.

All three of those jockeys will be riding several highly regarded horses on Breeders’ Cup Day on Nov. 4 at Gulfstream Park, where $10 million in purses will be at stake. Desormeaux has a couple of mounts in the Breeders’ Cup, but both will be longshots.

Jockey Ron Hansen is undefeated in six tries while riding Simply Majestic, but he won’t have the mount when the 5-year-old runs in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Gulfstream a week from Saturday.

Trainer John Parisella said that Angel Cordero will ride Simply Majestic because Hansen wouldn’t go to Calder, another South Florida track, to ride the horse in his Breeders’ Cup prep last Saturday. Hansen, the second-leading rider at Bay Meadows, stayed there and finished second on Variety Road in the Tanforan Handicap.

“I couldn’t believe it when Ron and his agent said he wouldn’t come to Florida to ride,” Parisella said. “They wanted to take off the Calder race but still ride in the Breeders’ Cup. But it just doesn’t work that way. Using Cordero isn’t exactly going to the bench.”

The Calder race was for $150,000, which was $50,000 more than the Bay Meadows stake. Herb Castillo, who had a one-race deal with Parisella, rode Simply Majestic to victory at Calder. Cordero has won with Simply Majestic before, and finished third with him in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Mile.

When John Henry won a division of the Henry P. Russell Handicap at Santa Anita in 1979, it was his first stakes win in California and his first for trainer Ron McAnally. Under McAnally, John Henry won two horse-of-the-year titles and earned $6.5 million, a record until Alysheba broke it in 1988.

Santa Anita will run the Russell Handicap again Saturday and John Henry will be there. But as a 14-year-old, he will not be running. John Henry is scheduled to arrive today from Lexington, Ky., where he lives at the Kentucky Horse Park, to be the grand marshal for a two-day Oak Tree Racing Assn. project called Eque-Fest.

Modeled after Belmont Park’s Horse Fair, a week-long show that has preceded the Belmont Stakes the last two years, Eque-Fest will feature about 90 horses, including a variety of breeds other than thoroughbreds.

John Henry, who was retired in 1984, returned to Santa Anita in 1986 and was paraded between races on Breeders’ Cup day.

Horse Racing Notes

Sky Classic, who would have been Canada’s best hope for a Breeders’ Cup win, wasn’t made eligible for the Juvenile because the 2-year-old colt suffered a hairline fracture in his right rear leg. Sky Classic, who had four straight wins after second-place finishes in his first two starts, was shipped to Florida in preparation for the Breeders’ Cup, but was lame after a workout last week. . . . Safely Kept, undefeated in eight races this year and a candidate for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, was offered at auction at Laurel last Sunday and attracted no bidders. The reserve price--the least she could be sold for--on the 3-year-old filly was $1.2 million. . . . Trainer Ron McAnally will have two starters in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile--Single Dawn and Balla Cove, an English-raced colt who will be making his first start on dirt. . . . Akinemod won for the fourth time in five starts Wednesday, going wire-to-wire in the $82,650 Cascapedia Handicap at Santa Anita. Akinemod, a 3-year-old filly ridden by Gary Stevens,paid $5.40, $3.80 and $3.20 and ran seven furlongs in 1:22 2/5. Miss Tawpie was second and Hasty Pasty was third.