Horse Racing: Looking for a Triple

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"Sure, I plan my races," says Braulio Baeza, 25. "The trouble is that 80% of them turn out differently than I plan."

Like that $5,500 allowance race at Florida's Hialeah Park last week. The 9-2 third choice of the bettors, mostly because Baeza was on his back, Native Pitt broke slowly from the gate, was just beginning to make a move when he made a misstep and snapped both forelegs. Jockey Baeza reacted instinctively. Hauling violently on the reins, he somehow kept the staggering horse in a straight line. Finally he flung himself clear of the falling animal. An ambulance rushed him to Miami's North Shore Hospital, where he was reported "alert and conscious," suffering from nothing worse than a slight concussion.

It was Baeza's second accident in a week: three days before, he had been lucky to escape with a bruised ankle when a horse jammed his leg against the starting gate. That first mishap kept him out of action for only half a day; after the second, doctors insisted that he stay in bed for 17 hours. Neither was likely to shake the almond-eyed Panamanian who is known in the trade as "El Chino" and "Stoneface," and who last year won more stake races (24) and more money ($2,582,702) than any other jockey in the U.S.

At the Newsreels. The stepson of a former jockey turned trainer, Baeza was 14 when he rode in his first race at Panama's Juan Franco track. He finished dead last, and after the race the stewards suspended him for being "inept." Vowing "Some day I win the Kentucky Derby" Braulio took to haunting movie houses that showed newsreels of U.S. races ("Eddie Arcaro always won. He was a beautiful hand rider"), worked hard to earn his spurs in the hell-for-leather scrambles that are typical of racing in Panama. Between 1956 and 1960 he won 912 races-about one-third of all the races in the country. Then, in February of 1960, on a visit to Hialeah, he ran into Chuck Parke, trainer of a string of thoroughbreds owned by Florida Businessman Fred Hooper. "I knew he was great the first time I put him on a horse," recalls Parke. "I told him to breeze a colt five furlongs in 1 min. 2 sec., and when I looked at my watch I couldn't believe it. It read exactly 1 min. 2 sec." Hooper quickly signed up Baeza as contract jockey for his stable.

Foreign jockeys have trouble adjusting to the carefully policed, mannerly ways of U.S. racing. Baeza had less than most: in six years, he has been "set down" for rough riding fewer times than almost any other top rider. He does have his idiosyncrasies: he wears his stirrups somewhat longer than U.S. jockeys do, sits straighter in the saddle, uses his whip only as a last resort—a fact that does not escape the notice of trainers, who dislike having their horses abused. "Braulio treats 'em kinder," Willie Shoemaker once commented, "and they run kinder for him."