Word: cauthen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Much has been made of the fact that Cauthen was preparing for the jockey's craft at the age of twelve. His zeal was tireless: flailing bales of hay to practice his whip technique, huddling with his father over race films to decipher the art of moving a horse up in traffic or setting him down for the stretch run, crouching along the rail at the starting gate to learn how to navigate those first chaotic moments of a race. At 13, he was practicing yoga to develop his concentration?yoga at 13!?because he knew he would need...
...perhaps even more crucial training for Cauthen began years before. He was reared, his mother says, "to be polite to everyone and to have good table manners." Put it another way: to be a gentleman, to be a gentle person. Human beings may or may not detect this quality, but a Thoroughbred race horse ?willful and fragile, high-strung and intuitive?certainly does...
Young, very young, Cauthen also accompanied his father on his smithing rounds at nearby race tracks. He began to help calm animals unnerved by shoeing or perturbed by a stranger's presence. He started to use his hands, and in his hands, horses relaxed. Whether coming from God, genes or good manners, this is the priceless gift for a jockey, the difference between wrestling a horse around a track, only to blunt his spirit for the run, and rating him kindly, handily, through the pace, while conserving enough of his energy for the stretch drive. Steve had the gift even...
...Cauthen tries to explain: "It's in the hands. Your hands are how you communicate with the horse. When you're setting down on the final drive, that's how you keep in touch with him. Some jocks can communicate with horses better than others. The horses sense it through the hands." He pauses and then shrugs: "Who knows how they sense it?" Cauthen admits that horses seem to remember him not by sight but when they feel him in the saddle and the touch of his man-size hands on the reins. Paddock punters watch with amazement as colts...
...Cauthen broke in when he was 16 at nearby little tracks like Kentucky's Latonia, where the horseflesh was less than prime and the riding more than a little rough. He handled that trial by guile and nerve and then moved on to New York's Aqueduct race track, the Big Apple. He was riding "bugboy light," a 5-lb.. weight allowance granted apprentice jockeys. But on the home turf of Angel Cordero Jr., Ron Turcotte 'and Jorge Velasquez, that was the only allowance...