Page 23 - September 2005 The Game

Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper The Game, September 2005 23
David and Cory Clark
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Canadian Made
By Peter Gross
There are many documented cases of members of one family excelling in the same sport. Brent Greztky played some pro hockey but was slightly overshadowed by his brother Wayne. Gordie Howe skated in Hartford and Houston with his sons Mark and Marty. Hockey has seen almost countless Sutters and a couple of terrific Hulls. Jack Nicklaus actually won a PGA Father-Son Tournament with son Gary. In baseball, there’s the Alou family - Felipe, Moises and Jesus; Blue Jay Garth Iorg occasionally played against brother Dane of the Royals, Cal Ripken Jr. set the consecutive game record while his dad was a coach with the Orioles and the Griffeys Ken Sr. and Jr. hit back to back homers for the Reds on September 14th, 1990.
Recently Muhammed Ali’s daughter Laila began knocking other women out, but all the preceding doesn’t come close to what is happening in horse racing in Southern Ontario.
David Clark and
his daughter Cory, to
the best of my
research, are North
America’s only father-daughter jockey team. Father Clark, at 51, continues to race many lengths ahead of Father Time. Even though he’s in his 33rd year of racing, Clark is still a regular visitor to the winner’s circle. David has won more than 2500 races worth more than $80,000,000 Canadian. At the time of this writing, father Clark was 6th in the jockey standings at Woodbine, with 45 wins. Meanwhile at Fort Erie, Cory, 27, was tied for 3rd in the standings with 36 wins.
The elder Clark isn’t that interested in any conversation about ending his career.
“I’ve thought about it a couple of times,” says Clark with all the enthusiasm of buying a used vacuum cleaner, “But I still enjoy what I do. I still like to win. If you don’t like to win there’s reason to be
out there. Laffit Pincay rode for 39 years.”
Clark didn’t necessarily encourage Cory to follow in his dangerous footsteps. “She was doing the show horse thing with the jumpers,” he says, “I wasn’t really for it but then she started breaking yearlings for Gordon Huntley in 1996. I
made her finish high school.”
As far as Cory was concerned, bursting
from a starting gate was all she could imagine.
“I always wanted to when I was a kid,” she says in a voice that makes her sound much younger than 27, “Dad discouraged me, but once he realized I was serious he said alright. I galloped for Gord Huntley. I broke a lot of babies for him.”
Cory’s first pari-mutuel race occurred on August 1, 1998, at Woodbine, when she was asked to guide a three year-old filly named Devi Deville. David smelled trouble.
“She rode it for Danny Zita, says Clark, “I’d been on that one and thought that’s not a good horse to ride for your first. She wasn’t a well mannered horse.”
founded. When the gates opened for the mile and a sixteenth race, Devi Deville took a bad step and nearly went down.
“I almost lost my stirrup coming out of the gate,” recalls a giggling Cory, “A mile and a 16th on that day felt very long.” Dad didn’t get much of a view of that incident, since he was two positions to the outside of his daughter on a horse that broke cleanly.
Since then, happily, Cory Clark has been piling up victories almost as prodigiously as her father has. So far in seven years, Cory has 478 wins. In that same period, with many more mounts, David has come first 719 times. As you might imagine, it’s a lot in common for a father and daughter to have. In the evenings, the phone lines buzz with racing talk.
“I usually talk to him every night,” reports Cory, “After the races, I’ll ask him how his day was, how his races went and I might ask him what I did wrong.”
There is the question as to how similar Cory’s riding skills are to that of her sire.
“A lot of people say we look a lot alike on a horse,” says Cory, “We both sit quiet and have
good hands.”
Comments from each rider’s agent are more
revealing.
Kenny Zweig (aka Schwabe) has been booking
rides for David for nine years.
“He’s an old school jockey,” says Zweig, “He rides
the races, and he lets me do my job. He’s the hardest working jockey here and I think he’s the best horseman of all the jocks. He understands horses - he doesn’t just ride races, he’s great with animals. He’s also very professional. He does 115 pounds every day and he does that through dedication. He’s never missed a workout. He’s never taken off a horse.”
CONTINUED PAGE 29 - SEE CORY & DAVID CLARK
Jockey Cory Clark & her father Jockey David Clark
Dad’s concern, unfortunately, was well
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