For the past 41 years, Bill Shoemaker’s second home has been the jockeys’ room–any jockeys’ room, from Santa Anita Park to Pimlico and points in between.
For Shoemaker, the room was more than a place to change his silks and polish his boots. He ate there, slept there, played cards, Ping-Pong and pool there and smoked his skinny, little cigars. Read More LA Times.com
He rode 40,350 horses, won with 8,833 of them — surpassed by only Laffit Pincay Jr.’s 9,530 winners — ran second 6,136 times and finished third 4,987 times. That meant he won 22 percent of the time, and he was in the money nearly half the time. At Santa Anita alone, he rode 2,544 winners during a career that started in 1949 and ended in February 1990. read moreRead More NY Times.com