Word: arcaro
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Bedroom Eyes. At 32, Edward George Arcaro looks like a cross between a sleepy Mexican vaquero and Cyrano de Bergerac. He is Italian by descent, Ohioan by birth. His face is thin and olive-complexioned, falling away on all sides from his celebrated nose. (Pretty, blonde Mrs. Arcaro sees beyond the end of his nose, thinks the most striking thing about his face are his "big, brown bedroom eyes...
Unlike the great cigar-puffing Jockey Tod Sloan, who went in for monocles, valets and lavish entertainment (Tod once threw a $25,000 party for Actress Lillian Russell), Arcaro believes in the durable dollar. His chief extravagance is clothes; he owns 40 suits, mostly conservative greys and blues. He drives a 1947 Cadillac, reads FORTUNE to keep hep on industry, and invests in such blue-chip stocks as A.T. & T. He likes Scotch, but mostly on Saturday nights. He knows what happened to some of his predecessors...
Troubleshooter. Trainer Ben Jones, whose business for 40-odd years has been to know good jockeys, and who has watched .the best of them, says that Eddie Arcaro is the best he has seen since Carroll Shilling. Why? B.A. doesn't rightly know: "It's like playing a piano. Some have a better touch than others...
There is more to it than that. All the good ones, like good piano players, must also have rhythm. Says Arcaro: "You've got to make the horse think you're part of him. You sit right tight and dig your hands into his neck. And when he drives, you drive, and when he comes back you come back with him. That's the only secret I know about helping a horse, and it's no secret." He might have added that a great jockey, like any champion, must have guts...
...Arcaro showed all these qualities one day last February at Santa Anita, aboard an iron-grey stallion named Talon. He was last going into the far turn, with 17 horses ahead of him. He whipped and drove the horse through holes that looked impassable. Then, with a spectacular finish, he won the $50,000 San Antonio Handicap. The next day, watching a newsreel of the race, Arcaro shivered at the chances he had taken...