Welcome Back, Kid

Steve Cauthen was in a bloody rush again, as he often is around this time of year, striding purposefully through another hurried hour of his life on the road.

Last Saturday afternoon at New York's Belmont Park, Cauthen, the 32-year-old American expatriate who had just driven Cristofori to a fourth-place finish in the 124th running of the Belmont Stakes, was making another sustained move, this one through the tunnel toward the jockeys' room. He looked as if he had just fought on horseback next to Henry V at Agincourt—mud streaked the racing silks he was wearing, those of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum of Dubai, and it appeared that half the Belmont track was encrusted around Cauthen's mouth and the blade of his nose. As he hurried toward the showers, he tried to explain to the colt's connections what had happened on his way to the bank. Cristofori, a French import, had finished 14 lengths astern of the victorious favorite, A.P. Indy.

"He jumped a little at the start," Cauthen said to Elisabeth Fabre, the wife of Cristofori's trainer, Andre, "but he ran well with the blinkers on. He was running very nice for me down the backside, and I thought, Something good could happen here. But then, into the second turn, he seemed to lose his momentum...."

As Cristofori loped happily along, like a camel in a caravan, the Belmont was quickening just ahead of him. Midway through the last turn, Pine Bluff, the winner of the Preakness Stakes, ran down Casual Lies and moved boldly to a half-length lead as he turned for home. But no sooner did Pine Bluff look like the sure victor than A.P. Indy, who had missed the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness after suffering a crack in one of his hooves, lowered his head and charged.

Casual Lies, feeling the sting of an injury similar to A.P Indy's, wavered for an instant and began a retreat. Then A.P. Indy went after Pine Bluff, who hung on resolutely as A.P. Indy dogged him mercilessly. Suddenly, in midstretch, Pine Bluff's drive stalled. A.P. Indy caught him as the wire loomed, sweeping to a¾-length victory in a swift 2:26 for the 1½-miles. The clocking was two ticks slower than the stakes record set by A.P. Indy's grandsire Secretariat but equaled Easy Goer's 1989 time as the second-fastest Belmont ever run. The race confirmed what many observers had long suspected: A.P. Indy is the best of the American 3-year-olds. But Pine Bluff is among the sturdiest. In finishing third—British import My Memoirs got up for second in the last jump—Pine Bluff not only won the Belmont's $91,776 third prize but also outdueled Casual Lies for the $1 million bonus that goes to the horse with the most points in a Triple Crown series.

Cristofori ran creditably, but he lacked the juice to make a race of it. As he headed for the jockeys' room, Cauthen's voice trailed off. A few solemn nods later and he was bolting past the crowds that lined the tunnel, where voices called to him, "Attaway, Stevie" and "Welcome back, Kid!"

In this way and many others, Saturday was a pleasant waltz through history for Cauthen and his fans. His brief appearance at Belmont Park was his first at that track in nearly 14 years, and his ride on Cristofori was his first in the Belmont since his unforgettable performance on June 10, 1978. At 5:45 that afternoon, as a boy just turned 18, he whipped and cajoled Affirmed to a bobbing-head victory over Alydar in what is widely regarded as the best horse race ever run in the U.S. Not only did the final charge to the wire climax a duel that had begun when Alydar moved up to battle the front-running Affirmed seven furlongs from home, but also Affirmed's final, desperate thrust at the finish made him the 11th winner of the Triple Crown and capped a rivalry unmatched in the history of the American turf. Alydar finished second in all three Triple Crown races that spring, and no horse since Affirmed has won all three.

On Saturday, Cauthen returned to Belmont Park as one of the leading race riders in Europe, an international figure whose skills as a jockey have taken him to every important racing venue in the world—from England to the Continent to Hong Kong and Australia—and made him one of the most popular riders in England. He is now the main jockey for the 500-horse stable of Sheikh Mohammed, one of the sport's most powerful owners and breeders. Cauthen's one-race swing through New York, in the company of his bride of five months, the former Amy Rothfuss of Bellevue, Ky., was but one stop in a weekend spent on both sides of the Atlantic.

Last Friday, Cauthen rode two winners at England's Epsom Downs, including a horse named Sharp Prod, owned by Queen Elizabeth II. "She's very nice," Cauthen says of Her Royal Highness. After the races at Epsom, he and Amy caught the Concorde and flew to Kennedy Airport. On Saturday morning he spent nearly two hours getting fingerprinted and photographed and filling out forms to obtain a New York jockey's license. As he raced around the grounds at Belmont looking natty in a gray silk suit, fans called out his name and wished him well, and trainers and fellow jockeys embraced him. He found a fleeting moment to inquire about the racetrack, still wet from heavy rains on Friday, when he ran into jockey Eddie Maple after the second race.

"What's the track like?" Cauthen asked. "Is it dead?"