Word: jockey
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...handicap a horse race simply by picking a jockey, regardless of his mount, the trainer or the opposition, is usually considered a form of gambling insanity. Not so last week at New York's Aqueduct race track. There, a $2 win bet on the same jockey in each of eight races on the same afternoon would have paid off $56. The jockey was Angel Cordero Jr., who has been almost unbeatable since the opening of Aqueduct's spring meeting last month. In 15 days of racing at the "Big A," Cordero has ridden 48 winners and finished...
Shoo-In. Cordero, of course, employs more than a model technique. Says Aqueduct Steward Warren Mehrtens, a former jockey who rode Assault to the Triple Crown in 1946, "Angel knows the characteristics of his horse as well as the others in the race. If he's behind a horse that he knows tends to drift outside down the stretch, he knows the inside is open to him." Cordero also possesses a fine sense of timing. Steward Nathaniel Hyland admires the way Cordero "paces horses to save their speed for the end." After riding one long shot to victory from...
...riding four of the six horses in some races," he says. Matos usually makes his selections ten days in advance, though last-minute changes keep him busy. Last year Matos selected Cannonade as Cordero's Derby entry. Reflecting his symbiotic relationship with his client, Matos speaks as if jockey and agent were indivisible. "I rode Cannonade in the Stepping Stone before the Derby," he recalls, "and liked the way he handled himself. I thought Little Current was not at his peak yet." He was right. Little Current did not reach winning form until two weeks later in the Preakness...
Perhaps by way of dispelling her reputation as a cold, aloof politician, the new Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition unexpectedly showed up on a folksy BBC disc-jockey show last week. If she were to become Prime Minister one day, asked the interviewer, would she have to be a good butcher? "I don't know whether I am a good one," Mrs. Margaret Thatcher replied. "I'm a reluctant one. But I recognize that this is one of the tests of leadership." Then, referring to her selection of a new shadow cabinet, she added...
...provide the best argument settler since the first dictionary (Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, 1604). After The Book of Firsts, there should be no further disputes about any of the following: a) the identity of the first magazine; b) the inventor of the first contraceptive; c) the first woman jockey; d) the first sporting event ever televised. Now if only there were a compilation of coffee-table non-books entitled The Book of Lasts...