The Bug Boy Rides Like An Old Hand

Venezia was surprised to hear that anyone had noticed how low he keeps his stirrups. "Some fellows are embarrassed to ride long," he says, "but I figure it helps me stay on horses if they get rank. If I was riding real short I wouldn't be tight on when I came out of the gate. Yeh, I know it looks great to shorten up and ride way up on top of the horse, but I'm not out there to look sharp. They don't care how you look if you go by the wire first." This utilitarian attitude impresses trainers and gets Venezia even more mounts. Says Frank Mc-Manus, one of the trainers for Greentree Stable, Venezia's winter employer: "For a bug boy to be so cool and have such judgment is amazing."

Venezia's unshakable coolth has almost become a personal trademark in his first year of racing. In the prerace warmup one never sees him hot-dogging it: strutting or posturing or crowd-pleasing, like some jockeys. "It doesn't make any difference what's going on around him," says an exercise boy at Tropical Park. "Venezia just sits there with his head down, maybe talking quietly to an outrider or walking the horse off by himself. Other horses can be tearin' up and raisin' all kinds of hell, but this kid moves around like him and the horse was alone in the world. He's the same way in a race. If he's gonna rate his horse, he's gonna rate it, and he don't care what's goin' on around him or what the others are doin'. One day I saw him go to the lead and then take back and take back and take back till his horse was just about walkin', and all the rest followin' behind, afraid to move out and make the pace. At the quarter pole he just flew away before the rest of 'em knew what was happenin'. Man, he's ice water!"

All the high praise notwithstanding, there are those who still take Michael Venezia with a grain of salt, and one of them is Michael Venezia. "Whenever I ride now, I get those five pounds," he says, "and who knows what I'll be like when they take the bug away? Right now I'm getting live mounts because that five pounds makes a difference, to the horses and to the trainers. Like you have a horse that's maybe just a little sore and yet the horse has class and'll run anyway. So they'll put the apprentice up, because it means just that much less weight on the sore leg. But when I lose the bug. maybe they'll try to get Ycaza instead of me, knowwhatImean?"

Racing is littered with bug boys who faded away when the asterisk evaporated, and with others who were big winners as apprentices but only run-of-the-mill jockeys later. "Every year there's an apprentice that's gonna be another Arcaro," says a New York racing official. "I remember when it was supposed to be Mickey Solomone; he sat a horse like Arcaro, looked like him just like one cabbage looks like another cabbage. Then there was John Beebe, and Terry Bove, and Ronnie Ferraro as a bug boy was the hottest thing since Coca-Cola. Two years ago it was Michael Carrozzella, and this year it's Venezia. But the last outstanding apprentice to become a really outstanding rider was Howard Grant, and that was seven or eight years ago. It's just like rookie ballplayers. At first nobody knows much about them, nobody knows their weaknesses, their style. It's that second time around the league they get him. After losing his bug, a jock is in for a John Foster Dulles period—a time of agonizing reappraisal."

The crucial time for a jockey is the first two or three weeks after he loses the bug. If he continues to get live mounts and win with them, he can go on to become a top rider. If he starts to lose, there is a reverse momentum; everyone attributes his apprentice success to the five-pound allowance and drops him cold. A key factor, then, is an agent who can convince trainers that the jockey will be a winner with or without the weight allowance, and thus can keep the boy on strong mounts. In April that will be Al Scotti's job, and he is girding for the challenge. The other night Scotti and Venezia and Joe Shea ( Ron Turcotte's agent) were sitting around discussing the future. "The trouble," said Joe Shea, whose real name is slightly longer and more Neapolitan, "is that racing is a game of situations: getting your boy on the proper horse in the proper race on the proper day. And then some other horse with a little more class drops in on you and wins it. Racing isn't a game of absolutes, is it? Absolutely not! Now Al'll have to be dealing with all these situations when Michael loses the bug."

"Winners bring winners," Uncle Al said. "It's all a game of winners. Whoever's winning at the time, he gets the business."

Michael usually sits quietly during such discussions, but sometimes he cannot resist administering a needle. "The guys who got it easy are the agents," he said, nudging a friend under the table. "The jock has to do all the work."

Joe Shea snapped to attention, cleared his throat and intoned: "Did it ever occur to you, Michael, that you may be very capable as a jockey and yet you're not worth two cents as an agent, because you don't have the ability to be an agent but you have the ability to be a jockey but an agent has this ability to be an agent. That's why they're necessary." And he rapped the table by way of Q.E.D.

"Joe," said Michael. "I was only kid-din' you. I think every jock needs an agent."

"The thing is," said Joe Shea, laughing, "there's some question about whether an agent needs a jock. In the age of automation, the jock'll be completely gone. We'll use monkeys and pay 'em peanuts." Apprentice Venezia feigned anger, but Uncle Al, apprentice agent, remained silent, perhaps thinking of April and the missing asterisk. "How much," said Joe Shea, "is 20% of a peanut?"