Horse Racing: Transistors from Panama

• Share

HORSE RACING

Looking over a list of leading jock eys recently, one American rider grumbled: "I'm going to Panama to become a U.S. riding sensation." He has a point.

In U.S. horse racing these days, the road to riches obviously starts in Panama. Last year Panama's Braulio Baeza took $2,951,022 in purses, second high est total in history; his countryman, Manuel Ycaza, has won more than 2,000 races in eleven years. The best grass-course rider in the U.S. is Heliodoro Gustines, and of the eleven top money winners so far in 1967, four are Panamanians: Baeza, Jacinto Vasquez, Lafitt Pincay Jr. and the winningest jockey of them all, Jorge Velasquez, 20. With 248 victories by last week, Velasquez seems almost certain to become the third man ever to win more than 400 races in one year.

Panama has never been celebrated for its horseflesh, and boasts only one race track in the whole country. What it does have is an abundance of tough, transistorized youngsters who grab at racing as one good way to leave Panama and see the U.S. in style. Jorge Velasquez was 15 and eking out a living on a farm when he managed to get a job as an exercise boy at Panama City's track. Standing 5 ft. 3 in. and strong as a bull, he got his first mount in 1963, when he was 16—and at 18 he set a six-month track record with 177 victories. The money was paltry, but better than getting pelted by the fans. "In Panama," he says, "you don't ride good, they throw things."

By 1965 he was in the U.S., riding for Owner Fred Hooper. Within four months, Velasquez won 89 races and set a New Jersey record by booting home six winners in a single day at Garden State Park. His 300 victories last year put him second to Cuba's Avelino Gomez for the riding championship, and so far this season he is well ahead of his closest rival.

Icy and taciturn, he is a master at getting a horse cleanly out of the gate, never rushes his mount too soon; if a horse has anything left for the stretch, Velasquez will get it out of him—with a silky touch, not a whip. "Suppose I come to the stretch head to head with another horse," he says, "and I whip him—and he loses balance. The race is lost."

With an income of $150,000 or so this year, Valasquez sports a powder-blue Cadillac and is planning to set up an investment fund. He keeps his Long Branch, N.J., apartment crammed with photos of his winning mounts and a huge record collection, which he usually enjoys alone. "I am not lucky with girls," he shrugs. "I am only lucky with horses, but then you can't win 'em all."