Born on May 1st 1960, Steve Cauthen is
a retired jockey from the US who rode his first race as a rosy
cheeked 16 year old at Churchill Downs, Kentucky. He made it round
the ‘athletics style’ course, but came in last on King of Swat.
However, he didn’t have to wait long for his fortunes to change,
riding his first winner just a week later at River Downs Ohio on Red
Pipe
What followed was a rise to fame in the
sport that can only be described as meteoric. At the still tender age
of 17, Cauthen became the first jockey to register earnings in excess
of $6m and just 12 months after that, he was the youngest jockey ever
to win the US Triple Crown, eclipsing his prize money tally from the
previous year.
Europe
After having hit the heights on the US
horse racing scene, Steve Cauthen tried his hand in Europe, not least
because he was having trouble making the weights in the US. He got
off to a fantastic start, winning his first European race on his
first appearance, riding Marquee Universal to victory at Salisbury
racecourse.
It was to be good portent for Steve
Cauthen, as he would go on to have a magnificent career that saw him
win three British Champion Jockey titles and ride winners in ten
English Classic races. The American jockey was something of a Derby
expert, as he added the Derby, the French Derby, the Irish
Derby and the Italian Derby to the Kentucky Derby he’d already won
before arriving from the US.
Cauthen was rightly honoured after his
retirement, receiving the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award and
featuring in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in
Saratoga New York. What is most impressive however, was being named
as the Racing Post’s 8th best jockey of the 20th Century in 1999.
Once Immortalised as Sports Illustrated
‘Sportsman of the Year’ Steve Cauthen was a true ‘pin
up’ in the sport of horseracing who now spends his days running his
own stud farm with his wife and three daughters.
