"The fact that he took Came Home out the day after his work for a
jog in Kentucky blew my mind," recalled owner, breeder, and loyal
Chris McCarron admirer Trudy McCaffery. "You know, anybody could
have got on him, but no--there was Chris, six o'clock in the
morning. I mean, the horse was just going to go for a little jog and
there he was. But this is what Chris is. These are the things that
Chris does that make him such a special person."
And these are the things the game will deeply miss following
McCarron's retirement from racing the afternoon of June 23. The news
was positively shocking when the 47-year-old McCarron announced his
decision just eight days earlier, but nobody, from fan to family,
could blame him. The reason was simple. The reason was legitimate.
Chris McCarron had finally grown tired.
"We're all gonna have to step down, you know," said friend and
fellow jockey Eddie Delahoussaye. "Laffit will one day. Shoe done
it; Longden, everybody. Arcaro done it. It's part of life. You can't
ride forever. But the thing is, you still wanna leave with your head
up in the air and have people respect you, and that's one thing
Chris McCarron will have--people that respect him. And that's worth
more than him being leading rider or in the Hall of Fame or
anything."
"No one's ever even been close to his success level in the
history of the game," remarked Dr. Wayne Gertmenian, president of
the Jockeys' Guild. "And the other thing that's interesting is that
except for Eddie Arcaro, I don't think anybody's ever retired at the
top before. He's still at the top of the game."
Indeed. When McCarron finally walked away, he had won 7,141
races. Only five other riders can lay claim to having won more. And
no jockey in history has ever earned more purse money than McCarron,
his career mounts amassing more than $264 million.
But there was so much more to McCarron than his gift between the
rails. He is a guy who punched the clock day in and day out,
constantly honing his skill and riding hard for the $2 bettor. To
his fellow jockeys, he was both role model and fierce competitor.
His integrity, compassion, horseman ship, and dedication to the
industry have long been venerated, hallmarks of a career that will
go down as one of the game's all-time finest. For nearly three
decades, no one has epitomized the sport quite like Chris McCarron.
Interestingly, the nine McCarron children were never even exposed
to horses in their Boston youth, so there was no real reason to
think Christopher John would ever pursue a life in racing. The fact
was, young Chris was a hockey nut. Pictures of the great Bobby Orr
bedecked his bedroom. It wasn't until high school, in fact, when
older brother Gregg began riding competitively, that the sport
caught McCarron's eye. He followed his brother's career closely,
intrigued by the combination of fast horses and big money. His
dreams of becoming a hockey star long gone, McCarron eventually
opted to follow in Gregg's footsteps.
After cutting his teeth under the auspices of trainer Odie
Clelland, McCarron was hoisted aboard his very first mount, a
gelding named Most Active, on Jan. 24, 1974. They promptly finished
last--a bad last. By year's end, however, Chris McCarron was a
household name. When he won his 516th race that year, at the expense
of his brother, Gregg, who finished second by a nose, he set a world
record for winners in one year. The 546 winners he had at the year's
end were more than enough to earn the 19-year-old an Eclipse Award
as the nation's top apprentice jockey.
So dominant on the Maryland circuit was McCarron, in fact, that
the temptation to take a crack at the big leagues soon became
inescapable. The year was 1978. McCarron headed to California.
Over the next quarter-century, the achievements gradually piled
high. A second Eclipse in 1980. A slew of big-time wins on John
Henry. Kentucky Derby (gr. I) and Preakness (gr. I) victories with
Alysheba. The Hall of Fame in 1989. Another Derby with Go for Gin,
another Preakness with Pine Bluff. Nine Breeders' Cup victories, two
Belmonts (gr. I), countless riding titles throughout Southern
California and an endless stream of stakes winners.
And with his success came unparalleled admiration. Gertmenian
remembers standing in a Belmont shedrow with trainer Allen Jerkens
last fall. Eventually, McCarron wandered past, and Jerkens
unexpectedly broke the conversation with a single number: "Ten."
A bit baffled, Gertmenian asked logically. "Ten what?"
"Ten, ten lengths," came the reply. "There are jockeys out there
who can get you five," Jerkens said.
"But he's the only jockey that ever lived that could get you 10
extra lengths."
Riding a Thoroughbred has been adjudged one of the most difficult
and dangerous tasks in all of sports. McCarron, in fact, will be the
first to tell you that the horses do all the work, that the job more
or less is to stay out of their way. But if the outcome of a race is
dependent upon split-second decision-making from the saddle--and it
so often is--then consider McCarron's innate focus and flawless
timing the ultimate edge.
The evidence is convincing. His masterful ride on Touch Gold in the 1997
Belmont, which kept Silver Charm from the Triple Crown, is still talked
about. Of his five Breeders' Cup Classic (gr. I) victories, Alysheba won by
the largest margin--a half-length. And McCarron still gets a kick watching
replays of the 1985 Charles H. Strub Stakes (gr. I), when he and
Precisionist held off two idols named Shoemaker and Pincay.
There were great moments with Best Pal and Bien Bien, Free House and
Flying Paster, Riboletta, Glorious Song, and Sweet Alliance. Champions
Flawlessly and Paseana were "cut from the same cloth," according to McCarron.
"They were gems, never did anything wrong." McCarron even made the most of
limited opportunities aboard standouts including Bayakoa, Sunday Silence,
Criminal Type, Lady's Secret, and Lemhi Gold. All were champions themselves.
All, at some point or another, won major races with McCarron in the saddle.
"It's very difficult to say who was absolutely, sheerly the most
talented," McCarron said when asked the inevitable. "I don't think we ever
saw how good Alysheba was. He was always doing that 70-80% stuff with me.
Tiznow was very much the same way. I'm inclined to say the out-and-out
fastest horse I ever rode was Precisionist. He was a horse that wanted to
win so badly. He did everything he possibly could to win every time he ran.
John Henry, though, was really, really something special."
Not all were entirely kind, however, and the thought of retirement was
made real on a couple of occasions. A 1986 accident at Santa Anita left
McCarron with a fractured femur. Things were much worse at Hollywood Park in
1990, when a terrible spill resulted in another broken femur, a fractured
ulna and tibia, and serious concerns about his future. But when external
doubts began to surface, hushed rumors that his days were indeed numbered,
McCarron's competitive zeal hit overdrive.
"It really pissed me off," he remembered. "You talk about throwing fuel
on my fire. 'Is retirement imminent?'...'Is Chris going to hang it up now?'
...I thought, 'No way. That ain't gonna stop me.' "
The passion, however, like that of many a great athlete, has ineluctably
died out. McCarron, in fact, pinpoints the root of his dimmed passion to the
day after this year's Kentucky Derby, when he feigned illness and took off
his Hollywood Park mounts. Ordinarily, the resultant guilt of missed
commitments would have ruined the rest of his day. This time, those feelings
were absent.
"That day it was different, and I could feel the flame diminishing," he
admitted. "Every athlete goes through periods in his career where they're
kind of tired of what they're doing, but it's temporary most of the time. At
the time I was baffled, and it was only after several weeks went by that I
realized it was a sign--a sign that it was time."
McCarron also concedes that there is trepidation about a future without
riding. Yet he is a man of positive thinking and forward progress, and with
plenty of opportunities already demanding his attention, his retirement is
perhaps best viewed as a transition. His work with the Jockeys' Guild is an
obvious priority, as is the Don MacBeth Memorial
Jockey Fund, a charity organization for disabled riders he co-founded with
both his wife, Judy, and actor Tim Conway. Additionally, director
Gary Ross has offered McCarron the role of Charlie Kurtsinger, the jockey of
War Admiral, in the upcoming film depicting the life of Seabiscuit.
There are other possibilities, too.
"Somewhere down the road I think I'd enjoy fooling around with some
horses," McCarron said. "I also want to try to develop a business model for
a jockeys' school. It's something that this country drastically needs. Every
other country that has racing around the globe has a jockeys' school.
England, Ireland, Japan, all over South America, France. Places as small as
Panama. Those jocks have to go through a rigorous program before they can
gain a license. In this country, you gallop horses for six months, go to the
starting gate, break a couple horses, and don't fall off, and BANG! You get
a license. You talk about an accident waiting to happen. That's one thing
I've thought a lot about for a long time. I've got some ideas as far as that
goes."
McCaffery, for one, feels McCarron will succeed regardless the direction
of his focus.
"Anything Chris does he gives 100% to the issue," she remarked. "He's so
well-rounded."
That, of course, traces directly to his youth, when all the McCarron
siblings were taught the importance of education and allowed to spread their
wings. When McCarron stood before an eager group of sixth graders recently,
entertaining the class with funny tales and exciting memories, he imparted
the same advice. Reach out, he told them, and aim high.
"I'm a true believer that everybody is born with an ability to excel at
something," he said. "Everybody has a talent to be really, really good at
something, whether it be drawing, singing, kicking a football, or whatever
it might be. But it's the lucky people that actually find out, they discover
what that talent is."
For the past 28 years, Chris McCarron has displayed his, and horse racing
is a stronger sport because of it.
