Word: longden
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...last week, they were also watching an unscheduled race between a couple of jockeys, Willie Shoemaker and Joe Culmone. At California's Hollywood Park the money was on Willie; at Maryland tracks it was on Culmone. At week's end both jockeys had broken or tied Johnny Longden's modern (1948) record of riding 319 winners in one year,-* and Willie, with 326, was seven ahead...
...knock the spirit out of a horse; any horse he rides can be raced again in a couple of days-and that's unusual. Willie's a great judge of pace. He doesn't whip the horse right out of the stall like Longden, but gets the feel of the horse in the first few strides, then knows instinctively how to race that horse to win. He's the kind of jock who 'rates' horses ... He has good hands, and horses instinctively like him-because he's kind to them, I guess...
Trainer Harry Daniels had shipped along some California hay to mix with the Kentucky brand, so that the chestnut colt would feel as much at home as possible. Veteran Jockey Johnny Longden had flown in from the West Coast to ride him in the seven-furlong prep race. The competition included Tulsa Oilman Tom Gray's Oil Capitol-Kentucky Derby favorite (5-2) and one of the best of the three-year-old crop by anybody's standards...
...Calumet Farm entry-Citation, Ponder and Two Lea-as though it was money in the bank. With the Calumet trio at 1-to-3, Noor was a lukewarm 6-to-1 second choice. At that, it seemed a surprisingly short price considering the opposition. But as it turned out, Longden knew best...
Said Jockey Longden: "We just sighted the wire and set sail." It was fast sailing. With a 22-lb. pull in the weights, Noor (whose 110-lb. package was 3 Ibs. less than Two Lea's and 14 less than Ponder's) had run the mile-and-a-quarter in two minutes flat-just a fifth of a second off the world record and 1⅓ seconds faster than the track record set by Seabiscuit in the same race ten years...