LITTLE ROCK — This is the 10th in a series profiling the 11 inductees into the Arkansas
Sports Hall of Fame. Ceremonies will be held Friday at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock.
HOT SPRINGS - It was a case of brother knows best.
Calvin Borel vividly recalls riding about a half-dozen horses for his older brother, trainer Cecil Borel, one night during the mid-1980s at Evangeline Downs near the jockey’s hometown of Catahoula, La.
The collaboration between the siblings, Calvin Borel said, produced four winners entering the final race on the card.
Quickly handicapping the race for a reporter late last month in Oaklawn Park’s track kitchen, Borel said he was sitting on a horse - also trained by his older brother - that had strung together three consecutive victories.
Here beginneth the lesson.
“I got to about the sixteenth pole and went to go around two horses,” Borel said. “The fence opened up and I got beat a nose and all hell broke loose. From then on, my brother said he wanted his horses on the fence, no matter what. He said it’s the shortest way around.”
Clearly, Borel, 44, has taken his older brother’s advice, or order, to heart since he’s one of the country’s most popular and successful jockeys today, a position fueled largely by his daring, rail skimming rides.
“The day I think about even being scared, that’s when I retire,” said Borel, whose 5-4 frame has withstood 40 broken bones, to date, in his career. “If you’re scared,you’re in the wrong business. You will get hurt.”
Borel, a two-time leading jockey at Oaklawn, is scheduled to be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame on Friday night at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock.
Borel’s resume includes 4,817 victories, highlighted by a record three triumphs in the past four runnings of the Kentucky Derby, $113.4 million in purse earnings and an unmistakable nickname.
He’s simply Calvin Bo-Rail.
“You can win anywhere,” said Borel, who rode his first winner in 1983. “But it’s the shortest way around, especially around the turns. You don’t realize how many lengths you lose. You’re not always on the best horse. Most of the biggest races I’ve won, I think, was saving ground on long shots.”
It started in 1991 when Borel guided Free Spirit’s Joyto victory in the $1 million Grade I Super Derby at Louisiana Downs.
Free Spirit’s Joy paid $59 to win.
Borel struck again two years later when another ground-saving trip, this aboard Rockamundo in the $500,000 Grade II Arkansas Derby, produced one of the biggest upsets in Oaklawn history.
Rockamundo paid a staggering $218 to win.
Borel won his second Kentucky Derby in 2009 aboard Mine That Bird, who recorded the second-biggest upset in race history ($103.20 to win).
In perhaps the signature moment of his career, Borel guided the smallish gelding to the rail shortly after the start and allowed him to drop far behind the other 19 horses.
Mine That Bird began picking off rivals on the second turn while still hugging the rail.
After going around one horse at the top of the stretch, Mine That Bird dove to the rail and squeezed past the tiring leader, Join in the Dance, approaching the eighth pole.
The hole was so tight that Borel’s left boot was above the rail.
“If you look at it real close, the head on shot of it, when his foot goes across the top of that rail, you can see the dirt fly up behind his boot twice,” said Borel’s longtime agent, Jerry Hissam of Hot Springs.
Borel also rode the rail to Kentucky Derby victories aboard Street Sense (19th early) in 2007 and Super Saver last year.
Using Borel’s math (or is it his path?), the jockey has won the Kentucky Derby - the world’s most famous race - three times by essentially going around only five horses.
“We all know what he’s going to do,” Borel’s close friend, jockey Robby Albarado, said after last year’s Kentucky Derby. “He just does it anyway.”
Not all outcomes are as dramatic as the Kentucky Derby, but Borel estimates his rail-skimming tactics are successful “85 percent of the time.”
A 15-percent failure rate includes races like a $12,500 claiming event at last year’s Oaklawn meeting.
Borel tumbled hard to the ground after his mount, Aztec King, bounced off the rail in midstretch, then clipped heels as he was trying to squeeze inside front-running Morality.
“I’ve learned a lot from the past,” said Borel, who wasn’t injured in that incident. “There’s a time to do it and a time not to do it. You can get yourself into jams.”
Typically, Borel’s winning moves come at the top of stretch as he waits patiently along the rail for seams that develop when front-runners invariably drift out.
It’s a combination, Borel said, of horses changing their lead running leg (horses typically are on their left lead on turns and right lead in the stretch) and becoming tired.
“They’re going to drift,” Borel said. “It’s just a fact of life.”
Kind of like what he learned from his older brother roughly 25 years earlier in south Louisiana, the country’s unquestioned cradle of jockeys.
To drive home his point about the importance of the rail, Cecil Borel would set up barrels in his barn as visual and physical reminders for his younger brother, then a virtually unknown teenage jockey.
“I used to come back after the races and hot walk them, cool them out,” Calvin Borel said. “He would put the barrels in the middle of the shed row. I thought, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He wanted me to see how far I was going. He said, ‘Go around those barrels a few times and you’ll see how wide you’re going.’
“It’s all about save ground, save ground, save ground. Cecil rode, so he’s been there and done that. He knew what he was talking about.”
Calvin Borel at a glance
SPORT Thoroughbred racing HOMETOWN Catahoula, La.
HIGHLIGHTS Began riding match races near his hometown of Catahoula, La., at the age of 8. ... Rode his first career winner Jan. 14, 1983, at Delta Downs in Vinton, La. ... Recorded his 3,000th career victory on March 26, 1999, at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs and his 4,000th career victory on Feb. 16, 2005, at Oaklawn. ... Produced the biggest upset in Arkansas Derby history when he rode Rockamundo ($218) to victory in 1993. ... Oaklawn’s leading rider in 1995, when he ended Hall of Famer Pat Day’s 12-year hold on the title, and again in 2001. ... Four-time leading rider at Churchill Downs (1999, 2006 and 2009 fall meetings and 2010 spring meeting). ... Also won riding titles at Evangeline Downs (1983), Delta Downs (1983, 1984), Louisiana Downs (1991-1992 and 1994) and Turfway Park (fall 2000). ... Became only the second jockey to reach 1,000 victories at Churchill Downs on June 4. ... Has more than 800 career victories at Oaklawn. ... Regular rider of 2006 champion 2-year-old male Street Sense and Rachel Alexandra, the 2009 Horse of the Year. ... Has won the Kentucky Derby an unprecedented three of the past four years. ... Has won an ESPY as the country’s top jockey the past two years.
QUOTABLE “Believe me, I love to win, no matter the race. It makes me feel just as good winning a race for $5,000 claimers. They’re the people that got me here. When you win and you don’t have the thrill, you’re in the wrong business.”
Sports, Pages 15 on 02/10/2011