The Bug Boy Rides Like An Old Hand

Michael Venezia came to the racetrack via the south side of Brooklyn, where he "played stickball and hung around." "Those were the two sports we did," he explains. "Anything after that was work, and work we ditn't go for. But we always felt we'd accomplished something even though we ditn't do nothin'. We ditn't feel like we were bored, knowwhatImean?"

During Venezia's childhood, his uncle, Al Scotti, was fashioning his own career as a hot-walker, exercise boy, jockey and trainer. When Michael was 10, Uncle Al took him to Belmont Park and put him on a pony, and the boy began his riding career in the predictably clich� manner: he was thrown. Five years went by before he approached another horse, this one a playful Thorough bred named Fort C. and owned by Uncle Al. "I got up on that horse, and he dropped me," Venezia recalls. "I came back the next day and he does it again, and then he drops me for the third straight day. On the fourth day I stayed on." His own childhood experiences with big, tough horses have left Venezia with a compassionate attitude toward nervous riders. "You don't ever call a jockey yellow or chicken if they don't want to ride," he says. "Some people are just afraid. I've seen guys exercising horses that were really scared of horses. You feel sorry for 'em, you don't knock 'em. Especially like half of 'em started riding and took a very bad spill and it shook 'em up. Yeh, I fell, too, but it affects some people more than others. Me, I just ditn't think about it. Some people think too much."

Indeed, if Venezia started thinking too much about all the spills he has taken and all the horses that have caused him trouble he probably would go to night school and take up accounting. For a while last year he rode for Edward O'Brien, an owner-trainer who is known for his patience with both horses and riders, and there was one spell when an O'Brien horse named Naybor was carrying on a blood feud with the bug boy. "Naybor was a common [troublesome] horse," Michael recalls with no gusto. "He came out of the gate and went down on his knees and I went right over his head. The next time I rode him he was all over the racetrack. When he was on the outside he wanted in, and when he was on the rail he wanted to get out. He'd pass another horse and he'd turn around and try to bite him. Naybor wasn't a nasty horse, he wasn't rank; after a race you couldn't find a nicer horse. But I just couldn't seem to handle him; the best I could do was third, and the horse should have won both races. So Mr. O'Brien put Bob Ussery on him, and right away they win. I learned something from that. Naybor needed somebody to really school him, and that's what Ussery did. Ussery's really too much at bossin' a horse. He lets 'em know right away. He could kill a horse if he wanted to, he's that tough."

But another jockey switch paid off for the boy, at Al Scotti's expense, and now that both uncle and nephew are prospering they relish telling the story. "I rode a horse for Uncle Al," Venezia begins, "and he figures to win easy. His name was Reely Swift, and he was really swift, but I lose on him."

Al Scotti jumps in: "So the next time I run Reely Swift, Michael is already committed to ride a horse named Me Cavan, so I hire Bill Hartack to ride Reely Swift, and I figure I got a lock on the race. I'm 2 to 1, and I've got money bet on my own horse—that's how sure I am."

"So we go into the stretch," Michael says, "and I'm fourth on Me Cavan, and Hartack is first on Uncle Al's horse. But all of a sudden Reely Swift came out and lost ground, and I sneaked through on the rail and won."

"And paid $52.90," says Uncle Al ruefully.

Soon after I' affaire Reely Swift, Uncle Al, an affable blue-eyed man of 38, decided to retire from the business of owning and training horses and devote himself full time to handling the business of his talented nephew for the customary 20%. As Michael Venezia's agent, Scotti is perhaps as much of a success as the jockey, though the evaluation of jockeys' agents is not an exact science. "Winners bring winners," racetrackers say, and as soon as Venezia began scoring heavily at Aqueduct and Saratoga, the trainers flocked to Uncle Al for the boy's services. But Scotti had already done his most important work; he had taught Venezia a riding style that won races and also appealed to trainers. "The main thing about him," says Scotti, "is his ability to give a horse a chance. He doesn't use a horse up too early. That is the biggest defect of apprentices, and it's only natural. They get too excited, anxious to win, and they move early and use a horse up too quick.

"But Michael is cool. He whips with both hands, but he's not what you would call a whip rider. A lot of trainers don't like you to hit their horses. You hit a horse once or twice and if he doesn't respond there isn't much point in hitting him anymore. If Michael hits a horse a few times and nothing happens he'll go back to hand-riding him. Most apprentices just keep banging away."

Arnold Winick, a leading young trainer, was impressed by another Venezia characteristic. "I like the way he rides long in the irons," Winick said. "That makes him very attractive to me as a jockey. Too many bug boys jack the irons way up; they think they look sharp on top of the horse. But you have better control with longer irons."