Steve Cauthen: Looking Back at 'The Kid' with the Man

When he came to Europe, and rode them all to sleep, everyone said that Steve Cauthen had a clock in his head. If a Swiss watchmaker wanted to check his work, he could just ask Cauthen to go five-eighths in a minute flat. But all that precision seemingly ran askew when it came to counting his years, each of which might have compressed a decade. As Laz Barrera said, when the press asked him about keeping “The Kid” on his Derby horse: “Stevie Cauthen doesn't come from this planet. He's a 100-year-old man in an 18-year-old body.”

By the following summer, mind you, Barrera had taken him off their Triple Crown winner: another year, another decade of experience. Already Cauthen had sampled highs and lows that would have felt extreme in the longest journey to the Hall of Fame-eligibility for which would prove the only way Time could hobble him to crawl along with the crowd. Sure enough, though only 34 on his eventual induction, he was already into a second year of retirement.

For Cauthen had done something that people always talk about doing, but never quite manage. He had quit at the top. The same composure that suppressed all immaturity, when denied anything resembling a conventional boyhood, had proved no less effective against those frailties that tend to menace the other end of a career.

The 30th anniversary of his Hall of Fame induction finds a boyishly familiar figure, a happy counterpoint to his precocious maturity. Cauthen welcomes TDN to a farm that might share description with its proprietor as modest, neat and ever grounded in this hard-working recess of Kentucky, an hour or so north of the manicured Bluegrass nurseries. From these gentle hills, too, might Cauthen have borrowed the dry undulations introduced to that familiar low drawl by a ready chuckle or some colorful reinforcement of language.

In other words, you'd know him anywhere–much as did Affirmed.

“I don't know that when I went and petted him on the nose, he said, 'Oh, here's Steve',” Cauthen says. “But when I was on his back, yes, he knew it was me. We just related. We had a rapport. It was really cool. If you're a jockey, this is like the best thing you can ever get.”

Try to take us into his head, then. For instance: do you think Affirmed knew who Alydar was, as well?

“Oh, I do, yeah.”

Like, even eyeing him across the parade ring, before the race?

“I don't know about that. But when they hooked, definitely. 'Oh, not that ****er again. He's a tough one, time to dig in.'”

Certainly you'll never get closer to what separates a champion from the herd than asking a horseman whose empathy so elevated him from his own competition that he rode a bewildering 487 winners in 1977, his first full year. So, yes, take us into their heads: what does a champion feel about other horses?

“Confidence,” Cauthen replies immediately.

Simply because they can trust their mechanics? Or are they drawing on something more elemental, something we might call desire or arrogance?

“A lot of it's within,” Cauthen explains. “Horses are like people, right? You got good ones, bad ones; smart ones, dumb ones. And you got some that want to compete, and others that don't. Some of the smart ones are so smart that they realize, 'I don't have to do that, screw those guys.'

“When you talk about the best horse I ever rode, Affirmed, first of all you're talking about ability. He had gears, he could switch on and off. I could creep up and then get him to shut off again. But what he really had was heart. It was boring to him just to win for fun, like he was doing in the Derby: I had to keep him going, because I knew Alydar would be coming and he could pull up in the stride or two when he thought he'd done his job.”

Steve Cauthen | Horsephotos

But that same asset, confidence, is also the key differential for the jockey–and it's a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, there was the unprecedented rise. From River Downs to Chicago to Churchill, he proved an immediate match for the colony veterans; then he beat Cordero on his debut mount in New York. One week at Aqueduct, he rode 23 winners. Even his first setback, a fall at Belmont, saw him compressing time as usual: the doctors said three months, Cauthen was back in one.

His comeback ride, aptly named Little Miracle, was his first for Barrera. So when Cordero got off that horse's half-brother in the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga, and Pincay stayed in California, Barrera turned to The Kid. They won–Cauthen is still tickled that Cordero was second–and proceeded to the Hopeful where this horse Alydar came alongside, and Cauthen discovered something new about what a Thoroughbred could do.

“You don't know where all this is going to lead you,” Cauthen reflects. “It's like, maybe it'll be good, maybe it won't. All I'm doing is living my life and trying to keep it all down. Because my parents had taught me well.”

Which proved just as well, once the blade of confidence was reversed. Within months of the Triple Crown, The Kid was a bust. He broke a knee, his agent had a heart attack. Somehow everything that had been so easy now became proportionately difficult.

“Confidence is huge in any sport, and life in general,” Cauthen remarks. “And it's easily lost. I had Laz's horses, but they really weren't in form yet. And literally not one trainer out there was willing to help me, except for Jack Van Berg who had a bunch of claiming horses. So one thing built on another. Definitely I lost confidence. Never the willingness to try. But I just didn't know what the hell I was doing wrong.”

And presumably that communicates itself to your horse, and becomes a self-fulfilling spiral?

“I'm sure it does, yeah,” he agrees. “Should I wait, should I go? Before, everything felt natural. You didn't even think about it, you just did it. And when you get like that, everybody else loses confidence. And then you're really screwed.”

To the extent that, yes, they even took him off Affirmed.

“I remember when I got beat by Seattle Slew in the Marlboro Cup,” he says. “Basically a great 4-year-old is always going to beat the 3-year-old, right? The next year Affirmed beat Spectacular Bid, the year after that Spectacular Bid blew everybody away. But anyway I heard it through the grapevine: 'Mrs. Wolfson thinks they put something in your drink!' Like I was drugged or something. Like I'd done something terribly wrong.”

To Cauthen, the horse just hadn't retrieved his form yet. But then of course he bounced back the first time Pincay rode him.

“It's life,” Cauthen says. “Swings and roundabouts. You just carry on. I wasn't too worried. But yeah, it was one of the great lessons I learned about human nature: people can be cruel, don't expect too much from most of them. All these guys that had been kissing my ass, begging me for time–and now they were all burying me. That's their job, I guess. If they don't do it, they get fired. So they want a salacious story about this guy who's washed up at 18. But Laffit came out to New York one summer, rode 220 horses, and won two races. And nobody said a freaking word! Deep down, I understood it. But still, it stung. You could tell some of those guys had enjoyed the twist.”

At one stage Cauthen went 110 rides without a winner.

“You do want to pull your hair out,” he says. “But I never gave up–and the horse that broke the streak was for Laz. He'd already dumped me from Affirmed. But Aaron Jones took me fishing up in Oregon, and I think he must have said, 'Laz, at least offer him the ride.' It was no special horse, but he won. Though they damn near disqualified me! I just wanted to get on some good horses again. And I knew that eventually, somehow, I would.”

Sure enough, next thing he knew, he was having dinner with Robert Sangster and accepting a job in Britain. He was still growing: 5'1″ at 17, 5'5 1/2″ at 20. And if the trajectory of his weight made Europe appealing, so did the chance of a reset. Because by now he really must have felt like that 100-year-old teenager.

Steve Cauthen and Barry Hills | Getty Images

So what a blessing, arriving in Britain, to find a mentor as redoubtable as Barry Hills. At 42, the trainer was old enough to be a father figure; but young enough, too, to empathize with his protege and share the good things in life.

“Barry and Penny took me in like family,” Cauthen enthuses. “They were huge in my life. We made a great start, but then the horses got a virus. And after a while I was like, 'Okay, screw it, let's just have fun.' Nobody was giving me any outside mounts, but I wasn't too worried. I was enjoying a little bit of a rest, breathing for a change. Because for the past three years, I had been like Michael Jackson. I literally didn't have a second to myself.

“Barry was such a trier, one of those who made it on their own. Built himself up from nothing, and I was the same sort of deal. So I could really relate to him, as opposed to some of those high-and-mighty types handed everything on a plate. And in the end he said, 'What the hell are you doing? Get off that golf course and get your ass going.' He just motivated me. 'Hey, let's do this, let's rev it up.'”

They did so to such effect that when Lester Piggott left Henry Cecil, it was Cauthen who got the call.

“It was the hardest thing I ever did, leaving Barry,” Cauthen confesses. “I think he understood. Penny had a hard time with it, for a while, just because they had been so caring with me. But I won four Classics the first year I went to Henry. So really after a short while, we were cool. That's why I respect Barry so much. You know when somebody's in your corner: even if it's maybe hurting them a little, they're still rooting for you.”

That partnership with Cecil defined an era of the European Turf. Its definitive moment perhaps came when Cauthen sent Slip Anchor into Tattenham Corner 10 lengths clear in the 1985 Derby. Everyone knew–the crowd, the other jockeys–that he had yet again roped the dopes.

Much like Tod Sloan at the turn of the century, he was introducing a whole new dimension to the British scene. There were times he pulled up and looked over his shoulder, thinking, “You muppets, how could you let me do that?”

“Sometimes I even knew beforehand that it was probably going to happen,” he says. “Because I knew that I could pace this horse and that nobody was going to screw with me.”

Steve Cauthen leads the field aboard Reference Point in 1987 Epsom Derby | David Cannon/Allsport

When he rode Slip Anchor into the winner's circle at Epsom, Cecil patted him on the leg and said, “Well done, old fruit.” A one-off, Cecil: an inscrutable blend of frivolity and genius. But Cauthen got on his wavelength.

“A little eccentric, sure, but a very intelligent guy,” Cauthen ponders. “Always thinking. You'd be sitting with him and could tell his mind was elsewhere, trying to figure what some horse was trying to tell him. He was so good at knowing when they were ready to step up, or needed to get some confidence back. Of course he had good horses, but he knew pretty quick which were which, and placed them so well.

“And he had a great team. They were all characters, these guys sitting round the breakfast table. There's nothing better. Because if you're not part of a team, really you're not going to get very far with anything in life.”

Of course, Cauthen himself brought much to the equation. That clock in the head was no less useful on the gallops, and arguably he created the parameters for what became the Frankie Dettori era. Cauthen remembers giving the young Italian lifts to the races, trying to take a nap against a torrent of questions.

“The mornings are a big part of it,” Cauthen agrees. “Being able to get off a horse and say, 'Okay, he's ready.' Or not. Because you can feel it. If you know what you're doing, know how fast you're going, it doesn't matter if you're working with another good horse or a donkey.”

More than some of his generation, he is complimentary about current riders: admires the Ortiz brothers, Saez, Rosario. But how about those of his own day?

“Cordero was the guy,” he replies. “He was really pretty on a horse, and strong. But he was messing with everybody, mentally. You always felt like he was riding the whole field. We were good friends, but in a race he was a nemesis. If he could win by five, he'd beat you a neck–and then go see the owner of your horse!”

All along, however, Cauthen's biggest adversary was his own body.

“I was never built to be a jockey, really,” he admits. “I was always skinny and long-armed, and it was obvious I was going to grow. I knew when I started that my time was probably limited. So if I got offered California on Sunday, hell yeah, I was going. Same when I was in Europe, I'd go to Paris Sundays. I'd go six months without a day off.”

He wonders whether he might have hung in there another year or two, had he known that Godolphin was round the corner. But Amy was expecting their first daughter, and already the last couple of years he had been asking himself by midsummer whether he would see it out. “Because with weight,” he says, “it's more what it does to your head than your body.”

But the great thing is that the urgency imposed on his career had been anticipated by its runaway inception. As can also be seen in his siblings, themselves so esteemed in our community, he had the best of starts via nature and nurture alike. Even as a toddler he would lie down with horses in the field. “I always tried to think a horse,” he says. “Tried to get a horse to do what you wanted without making him, getting him to want it for himself.”

And until the shackles of weight closed, he could elude even those of Time itself.

“I had nothing like a normal childhood,” he reflects. “I realized that myself. With somebody my own age, I didn't know what to say. We had nothing in common. So it was weird. But like everything, it all pans out. You start to realize what's what.”

So if his flesh ultimately conspired against him, he remained ever comfortable in his own skin. And that has sustained his fulfilment in the decades since, away from the limelight: with his family, his mares and yearlings, his clients at Dixiana Farm.

“It's nice to feel like you're back in the game,” he says. “As breeder or owner, it's only the odd horse, but at least you're talking to your trainer and you're involved. And that's what I always felt I was good at. I was a team guy, good at thinking stuff through. The sad thing, when you quit, is that you know you'll never be as good at anything else in your life. But I've always loved what I do, and I still love it today.”