Page 34 - January 2005 The Game

34 The Game, January 2005 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
Clark just loves to Win
What are you Reading?
by Chris Lomon
For what he's accomplished in his enduring career, you might be surprised as to which race holds the most importance to David Clark.
Resting on his laurels, past and present, simply isn't his style. When the man known as 'Sleepy' speaks of his life in the saddle, he never dwells on the many milestone moments he's achieved over the past 31 years.
Rather, Clark is focused on what he sees as his most significant mount.
"I always look at the next race,
the next 'overnight,'" said the 51-year-old Clark, originally from Blaydon, England, but a Canadian resident since he was three. "I don't find myself looking back, at least not yet."
When it was brought to his attention that 2003 represented a milestone year in terms of his career, Clark, who won 32 races in 1973, his first year in the saddle, wondered what it could possibly be.
"Is it really 30 years since I started?" he shot back, with a subtle shrug of the shoulders. "I didn't even think about that. Really, it just doesn't seem like that long ago."
For a man that has built up impres- sive numbers, especially in the latter stages of his career, Clark, a man with four decades of experience to his name, has never troubled himself with keeping tabs on his statistics.
A prime example of his not being a "numbers man" came when Clark notched his 2,500th lifetime victory aboard Devils Right Hand on June 11, 2004, no doubt a significant mile- stone. But he wasn't about to pat himself on the back.
"It's a nice thing to achieve," said Clark, who has earned a Sovereign Award as Canada's top jockey in 1998 and an Avelino Gomez Memorial Award in 1999. "Once you're done, you'll look back and say, 'That wasn't too bad.' (Being a jockey) is not a bad job at all."
Not that he has ever made it look like one, though.
Irwin Driedger, a former champion jockey himself, competed against Clark at Woodbine over an eight-year span starting in 1982.
And although Clark's "game face" may suggest otherwise, Driedger insists the veteran is having as much fun in the irons now as he did back then.
"He's just a professional," said Driedger, who now holds the title of Manager of the Jockeys' Benefit Association Canada. "He's just a focused guy when he comes to the racetrack. That's probably why he's done so well, especially later on in his career. He loves what he does."
Clark's introduction to horses came
courtesy of his mother, who owned a few Toronto-area riding schools in the 1960s and 70s. When a visitor to one of the schools suggested he try his hand galloping horses, Clark quickly accepted the offer.
"It was a good summer job to have and the hours were excellent," offered Clark. "I figured I'd try it out and see what it was like. I guess you can say it worked out pretty well."
Under the guidance of the late Gord Huntley, Clark was quick to excel. Three years after he began his life in the irons, he won his first stakes race aboard Bay Streak.
With each racing season, Clark gained more and more confidence and with it, the respect of horsemen throughout the country. His patience and guidance with two-year-olds became synonymous with his name.
Clark also developed a reputation as a rider who was at his best in the big events, including two memorable triumphs in Canada's classic race, The Queen's Plate. In 1981, Clark piloted Fiddle Dancer Boy to victory in one of the more thrilling "Gallop for the Guineas," and in 1985, he guided the highly regarded La Lorgnette, to a rare Oaks-Plate double.
"The two wins in the Plate definitely stand out as some of the more memorable times I've experienced over my career," said Clark, the only jockey to win two Queen's Plates in the 80's.
In typical fashion, though, Clark, seemingly uncomfortable speaking of his accomplishments, quickly changed gears.
"Really, it's the little things you tend to recall. The things that just tend to stick with you."
After putting up solid statistics throughout the 1980s, Clark's fortunes began to spiral in the early 90's, prompting the rider to seriously consider hanging up his tack.
It's a decision he's glad he never made.
After ranking tied for 11th and 15th, respectively, in 1995 and 1996, Clark was in top 10 territory in 1997.
It was 1998, however, when Clark truly shone.
After building an early and insurmountable lead in the Woodbine rider standings, Clark took the title by winning a career-best 176 races.
That year, on the afternoon of July 17, Clark became the first jockey since Robin Platts in 1981 to win six races on a Woodbine card and the first since Sandy Hawley in 1974 to win six straight races.
"It took me 25 years to get this right," Clark deadpanned when he collected his first Sovereign Award at the year- end gala in 1998.
Six years later, the second- oldest rider (Jim McKnight is 52) in the Woodbine jock's room is still going strong, shrugging off a few serious injuries along the way, including in August of 2002, when Clark missed two months after a serious morning training work accident put him in intensive care.
"I've always enjoyed what I do," said Clark, who missed two months with a fractured wrist after another training mishap in June of this year. "I always have and I still do. When I stop enjoying it, that's when I'll quit.
Once in a while, when you have a bad week, the thought crosses your mind. But then something happens and you get right back into it."
His daughter and fellow jockey, Cory, who captured a Sovereign Award as Canada's Outstanding Apprentice in 2000, has learned a great deal from watching her father compete, including sound advice she's drawn from her dad along the way.
"He always told me to be patient," said Cory, a Fort Erie-based rider, who, along with David, became the first father-daughter combination to compete in a Triple Crown race (Prince of Wales Stakes at Fort Erie, July 20, 2003). "He's a pretty quiet guy, but he just loves racing."
There have been far more highs than lows for Clark, the Toronto oval's senior statesman in terms of service, including one of the most cherished highlights of his career.
"It was unexpected. I never considered myself in that type of company," said Clark, of his 1999 Avelino Gomez Memorial Award, an honour that recognizes contributions on and off the racetrack. "I rode with Avelino and he was phenomenal."
Though he appears to be a shoo-in for Hall of Fame honours, the Kleinburg resident isn't compelled to look too far down the track right now.
"I love to win and I love to ride. One day, if I lose that desire, I will call it a career."
Jockey David Clark at Woodbine
The Game file photo - 2003
Book Review by Harlan Abbey, author of "Showing Your Horse" and "Horses and Horse Shows"
"WINK: The Incredible Life and Epic Journey of Jimmy Winkfield." By Ed Hotaling. McGraw Hill, publishers. 336 pages. $29.95 (Cdn).
There was a movie made years ago about the white Lilppizan stallions of Vienna, with the main action being the rounding up of the herd and moving the horses from the path of the advancing Russian armies into the American zone, so their tradition could continue as it had in the past.
The biography of Jimmy Winkfield, one of the last great Negro jockeys of the early 20th century, puts that movie's plot to shame -- in 1919 Winkfield and other race-trackers rode and herded 270 Thoroughbreds from Odessa, the pre-Revolutionay "Russian Riviera," over 1000 miles to Warsaw
Poland, and with the loss of only eight horses!
And again, during 1940, Winkfield - - by then one of Europe's leading trainers -- had to abandon his training stable outside of Paris when the Nazis invaded. He was able to leave via Lisbon, but arrived in New York City in April of 1941 with only $9 in his pocket. What did the resourceful horseman do next? He put shoe-black- ing on his greying hair, lied about his age (61) and got a government (Works Progress Administration) job handling a jackhammer on New York City's streets.
Black jockeys dominated Kentucky racing and the Kentucky Derby in the late 19th and early 20th Century and Winkfield was one of the best. In only four Derby tries he was third in 1900, won in '01 and '02 and was second, on an admittedly misjudged ride, in '03. He and Isaac Murphy, his idol and probably the greatest Black rider of all time, were the first jockeys to ride back-to-back Derby winners, later joined by Canada's Ron Turcotte (Riva Ridge in '72, Secretariat in '73) and Eddie Delahoussaye (Gato Del Sol in '82 and Canadian-owned and trained Sunny's Halo in '83).
But as financial problems plagued racing, white riders used fair means and foul to deprive their Black rivals of mounts. And Winkfield made a possible career-ending mistake when he took off a horse owned by the powerful John E. Madden when another owner offered him $3,000 to ride another horse, win or lose, in the Belmont Futurity. With Madden virtually black-balling him in the U.S., Winkfield joined the many American riders moving to Europe, where purses for the biggest races were higher than at home.
CONTINUED PG. 38 - SEE BOOK REVIEW