That Baby Face Will Fool You

Steve Cauthen attended his first Kentucky Derby in 1963, the year Chateaugay defeated Candy Spots. He was taken to the Churchill Downs back-stretch by his mother and father, and through the long afternoon he romped on the grass and dug away at the family picnic hamper. Steve Cauthen remembers little about that day because, like the horses running in the Derby, he, too, had only recently become a 3-year-old. The young man has been back for several Derbies since then, most recently last spring when Bold Forbes outgamed Honest Pleasure through the stretch. He remembers the date of that Derby—May 1, 1976—more readily than the race itself, because on that day he became 16 years old and could start his career as an apprentice jockey.

"Jockey" may not be quite the right word to use for Steve Cauthen. There are some 3,000 officially certified "jockeys" scuffling, whipping and emitting banshee screams as they break out of starting gates from Vancouver's Exhibition Park to El Comandante in San Juan. In a little more than seven months of riding professionally Cauthen has become accepted as a "race-rider," a term granted by racetrackers to only the very best: Shoemaker, Cordero, Hawley, Pincay, Velasquez, Baeza. Since being put up on a 136-1 shot named King of Swat last May 12, Cauthen has won 240 races and purse money in excess of $1.2 million. His own take during his abbreviated first season is more than $150,000.

Cauthen is now in the third "kiss" stage of his stunning apprenticeship. Kisses in racetrack terminology denote the asterisks placed alongside a fledgling rider's name in the entries. When he starts out, an apprentice is given three asterisks, allowing him to ride 10 pounds lighter than a full-fledged jockey. After five winners, the first kiss goes and the youngster competes with a seven-pound allowance until he has won 35 races. After that, the apprentice rides with a five-pound allowance until one year has elapsed since his first winner. Cauthen thus has nearly five more months to ride as an apprentice. Former Jockey Sammy Renick, who has studied riders for nearly 50 years, says. "Getting Steve Cauthen to ride your horse with a five-pound allowance is like having a license to steal, and trainers know it. Cauthen looks like the best young rider to come onto the racetrack since Willie Shoemaker in 1949."

Cauthen is 5'1" and weighs 95 pounds. He began winning last spring at River Downs near Cincinnati and has moved onward and upward to Arlington Park and to Hawthorne near Chicago and, four weeks ago, to Aqueduct in New York, the track where jockeys are most critically judged.

Cauthen arrived in New York on the last day of November. After losing on his first four mounts, he took a 4-year-old named Illiterate out for the featured $25,000 eighth race. Illiterate was the lightweight at 110 pounds and had won but one claiming race since early April. Cauthen kept her close to the leaders and, with an eighth of a mile to go. rammed her through an opening to win by half a length. The tote board lit up at $61.20.

In his next 51 rides at Aqueduct, Cauthen had seven winners and was disqualified from another, a good but not extraordinary showing. There is an interesting thing about that disqualification, however. Cauthen's mount veered out in the stretch, but the rider was held blameless by the stewards. Being disqualified unsettles any rider and often causes inexperienced jockeys to become cautious. Not Cauthen. Two races after the disqualification, he drove a horse up along the rail to win.

In one 17-race stretch he bagged 12 winners. He was hot at all distances. He won the first stakes race of his career by taking the $55,050 Gallant Fox Handicap with a 19-1 shot named Frampton Delight. In just 21 days of riding at Aqueduct the 16-year-old apprentice won 29 races and $375,000 in purses. Projected over a full racing season, that would give Cauthen 425 winners and perhaps as much as $6 million in purses. No New York rider has won as many as 300 races in a year (though Velasquez just missed with 299 when Aqueduct closed last week), and no jockey has ever earned $5 million in purses.

Cauthen grew up in Walton, Ky., about 20 miles from Cincinnati and 60 miles from the bluegrass country of Lexington. His father, 44-year-old Ronald (Tex) Cauthen, is a blacksmith who works the Kentucky-Ohio circuit, and his mother Myra is a licensed owner/trainer. Two of his uncles are trainers.

At birth Cauthen weighed in at a normal enough 7 pounds, 12 ounces. But when he became five, his weight lingered at around 35 pounds. Young Steve was around horses on the family's 40-acre farm and his father would take him to work with him on the backstretches. "One summer he seemed to be with the starters in their stand at River Downs for almost every race." Tex Cauthen recalls. "He was beginning to learn things. At 12 he came to me and said, 'Dad, I think I want to be a jockey.' We sat down and I told him that if he was going to gain weight I didn't want him to even think about being a rider. I've seen too many jockeys practically commit suicide by starving themselves to death to make riding weight. That was the stipulation—no reducing.

"He wanted to ride everything that moved and even some things that didn't. When there wasn't a horse available he would sit on a bale of hay and use a stick as a whip. He chopped up many a $2.50 bale of hay that way. He kept getting better at using that stick, and the year before he went out to ride as an apprentice he could switch the whip so well that he could hit within an eighth of an inch of where he wanted to hit."