Cauthen: A Born Winner

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Cauthen took the kind of spill that tests courage a few days before his apprenticeship was to expire. His right wrist was broken; kicked by the flying hoofs of trailing horses, his forehead and right hand were cut, and he suffered a concussion and cracked ribs. He was out for a month. When he came back, he answered all the questions. Rounding the turn for home in his first return race, he drove a colt named Little Miracle—Affirmed's half brother—through a narrow opening between front runners and booted him home the winner by 1¼ lengths. He used horse balm to soothe his tight, sore right hand and its ugly crisscrossed scar and went about the business of riding. Says Trainer Tommy Kelly: "I don't think the kid has any fear. He just put some of our liniment on his hand and went out there and rode. No hesitation, no fear."

For Cauthen, the comeback had been a foregone conclusion: "I've been falling off horses since I was two. I wanted to ride so bad it didn't take much to come back. I came back faster than I thought I could."

The boy was becoming a man. All the gifts, the marvelous, balanced seat, the head filled with horse sense and a ticking clock, the wonderful, knowing hands of the bugboy had been fused with the courage of the race rider. In short order, the stakes horses started to come his way: Johnny D., last year's turf champion, and Affirmed, the best two-year-old colt and his Triple Crown mount this year.

It was while riding Johnny D. that Cauthen first convinced the experts that he was developing as a shrewd competitor. In the Laurel International, one of the major grass races of the year, Cauthen took an early lead and then throttled back to lull his rivals—setting a "false pace," track people say. In the stretch, Cauthen suddenly drove Johnny D. on, catching the field off guard, and came home a winner.

There seems to be no limit to the potential of this slight young Kentuckian who so loves to ride. "Gettin' the best you can from a horse, that's the whole thing," he says. "That's the real pleasure." He has been, so far, charmingly oblivious to the fame he has earned so quickly and the pressure that has come with it. "Reason I don't feel any pressure is because I don't want to," he says simply. "You have to perform, have to do your job."

Cauthen may still lack a bit, perhaps, of the ruthless will to win that marks the enduring greats of race riding. He remains Myra and Tex Cauthen's well-brought-up boy, a kid who spent the night before the Kentucky Derby in a sleeping bag on the floor of a hotel suite crowded with relatives because, as Brother Doug, 15, quite logically explains: "It was his turn."

At California tracks this winter, Cauthen's remarkable winning record fell off slightly, and the going in New York will be more testing in his sophomore year. No longer merely a phenomenon, he is a craftsman now, settling in for the long haul. But like vintage port, he can only get better with age. Real race riders always do. Steve Cauthen is a real one.