When All The World Is Young

Because he was such a mysterious new presence and such an appealing figure (and because he was native-born), he captured the imagination of the country. Johnny Carson told Steve Cauthen jokes, gen-u-wine media celebs like Barbara Howar chased him cross-country for an interview; and such was the everyday journalistic crunch that once, by the scales, two TV crews fought a pitched battle over camera locations. "I'd come into the jocks' room in the morning, and there'd be five guys waiting," the kid recalls. "And they'd be screaming: 'I was first,' 'I'm next,' begging me to talk to them. It was ridiculous."

But if Cauthen was a comet in the insatiable Famous People Industry—in the 1977 parade, videotape highlights will show him marching somewhere between Anita Bryant and R2-D2—he threw a monkey wrench into the machinery of racing wherever he rode. Until June 28 he kept a five-pound apprentice allowance—hey, gang, let's give Rod Carew four strikes!—that utterly destroyed the equipoise of the ancient system. Worse, there was no price to be had on his races.

Strangely, Cauthen 's success proved how far horse racing is out of the mainstream of American life. He didn't sell. To be sure, for a substantial fee, he rode Steve Cauthen Days at various outback ovals—Penn National, Latonia, Hazel Park , etc.—and invariably he pulled warm, record-type crowds, but this was largely an intramural matter of churning up a devoted existing constituency. Horse racing has no rub-off. While Cauthen is the Bruce Jenner of 1977, the Simpson or Seaver of his sport, while he grossed 600 or 700 grand, he made little beyond the fringe; not a single endorsement.

Thus, in a perverse way, while Cauthen is the biggest star in the most crass sport of all, he has quietly returned to his roots, as pure a major athletic commodity as there is to be found. Often nowadays he rises at dawn and goes to the track just to drink coffee and hang around. "Saturday was always my favorite day when I was growing up, because then I could be around racetrack people," he says. "Nobody makes me come out mornings now. I just like the atmosphere. I like the people at a racetrack—that's my people."

His is a scrawny little voice, rather what you might expect, given his size. But it is of honest timbre, almost devoid of backwoods inflection, and those grown-ups who have spoken to Cauthen intelligently about things within his ken have found him articulate, even garrulous.

"I'm not a headline freak," he says. "I never wanted the publicity. All I wanted was to be appreciated by the people around me, racetrack people. But I understand the publicity stuff. In New York , everything's got to do with business. Somebody comes to you because they need you. They don't necessarily have bad intentions. They just need you at that time. I don't mind. Now last spring, I was a tired kid. But it's O.K. now. I always wanted just the one thing, to be a race rider, and this is the place to be one."

Professionally, Cauthen is bred as well as any foal ever dropped in the Bluegrass. On the home side is the father, the blacksmith, Ronald (Tex) Cauthen . On the shop side is his agent, Lenny Goodman . One was raised in Sweetwater , Texas ; the other come outta your Brooklyn . Between the two, between Sweetwater and Brooklyn , there is no virtue or value in race riding that has not been imparted to the child.

Tex Cauthen is the salt of the earth. He grew late, to 5'9", and so no matter what the doctors say, he is not altogether convinced that his oldest son won't shoot up a few more inches from his present 5'1". If so, if so. Even now, the father's primary emotion about his son is being happy for him. The rest he takes in stride. "I just feel that Steve's doing what he's supposed to be doing," he says.

His wife Myra has trained horses, as have a brother and a brother-in-law. And her father owned horses. It's in the family. She met Tex at the track. They are nice-looking people, but they don't look a thing alike. He is dark and rounded, and she is light and angular. And Steve doesn't look at all like either of them. Apparently, he got the least of their height and the best of the rest of them.

The Cauthens bought the farm in Walton in 1965, when Steve was five, and they keep broodmares there. At tracks like Latonia, a few miles up the road, or at River Downs, Tex Cauthen earns $27 for shoeing a horse. It is one of the most honest professions. There are no shortcuts. All about the Cauthen living room are pictures of horses winning races for members of the family—trainer or rider—but the one large painting over the fireplace is of a smith shoeing a bay. This helps to keep things in perspective. The Cauthens remain very much in perspective. The neighbors, ever-vigilant watchdogs in strike-it-rich cases such as this, detect no new airs. The Walton Advertiser wrote a nice story on the local boy when he passed Cordero's earnings record, but, in keeping with priorities, the lead story that edition featured John Williams of Bracht Piner Road, who was cited for raising a 17�-pound muskmelon.