According to legend, William Lee Shoemaker was born in West Texas on August 19, 1931. He was expelled from the womb prematurely, as if he was in a hurry to get to the finish line. When he emerged, he was nothing more than a breathing zygote, weighing less than forty ounces and measuring only ten and a half inches long. His grandmother, it was said, put him in a shoe box and gently warmed him in the oven all night long so that he would not die.
Living through that night was only the first of many miraculous things Shoemaker would do in his life.
His parents divorced when he was four, and he was sent to live on his grandfather’s farm in Abilene, Texas. He rode his first pony there when he was seven years old.
Three years later, Shoemaker moved to Southern California to be with his father. Despite his tiny stature, he displayed obvious athletic ability. His first sport was not the oval of the race track but the squared circle of boxing. He won a Golden Gloves championship in the 95–105 pound weight class, though he was technically still less than ninety-five pounds on the scales.
At age eighteen, Shoe, as he was already called, still wasn’t 5 feet or a hundred pounds, but that was the year he started his professional riding career. It took him a month to win his first race, and it earned him the princely sum of $10.
In 1950 Shoe participated in his first full year of racing, and all he did was win 388 races to tie as the top rider in the country.
Many felt that the secret to his success went beyond his ideal size. He had great hands, which were noted for both their vice-like strength and also a feathery touch. Unlike the coming generation of magnificent Hispanic riders who stood out for their command over a horse, their ability to demand and get from an animal, Shoe was distinguished for letting a horse find his own way.
Whatever Shoe did, however he did it, it worked exceptionally well. Every single year from 1958 to 1964 he was racing’s biggest money winner. He rode six winners in a single day, six different times. Over the course of his long career he’d won multiple Kentucky Derbies, Preaknesses, and Belmont Stakes.
By 1970, with more than twenty years still left in his career, Shoemaker had won more races than any other rider in history. So for two long decades, every single time he hit the winner’s circle, he broke his own record.
Shoemaker’s career had its low moments as well as its triumphs. In the 1957 Kentucky Derby, he was on the back of Gallant Man, the favorite, and made a far more embarrassing mistake than anything Ronnie Franklin ever did on Spectacular Bid. Shoe had the race in the bag when he mistook a furlong post for the finish line and stood up in the irons to soak in the glory. While he celebrated, Iron Liege zoomed past him to the real wire and won the race. It was a mortifying moment, on racing’s biggest stage, and it was something that he never entirely lived down despite all of his many subsequent accomplishments.
Shoemaker was a mostly lucky guy who avoided major accidents on the track, but when he finally had them, they came in quick succession and they were brutal. In 1968 he was thrown off his horse and broke his leg so severely that he required a pin to repair his bone. The only problem was there was no pin his size available in the operating room. While he waited on the table, hospital workers had to scour the building to finally locate one that fit his bone. The issue was solved only when one of the ER nurses thought to look in the children’s ward.
Very soon after returning to work, Willie was hurt again. As he entered the track, his horse was spooked and flipped over, landing on top of the tiny rider. Fortunately for Shoemaker, a friend of his, a doctor, happened to be at the race and ran to his aid. “Doc,” Shoemaker said, “I’m hurt, I’m hurt real bad.”
Indeed he was. Shoe had broken his pelvis, injured his bladder, and damaged the nerves in his leg.
Like Ronnie Franklin, Shoemaker’s problems went far beyond the track. Shoe also had a tumultuous personal life with multiple divorces and substance abuse issues. Though less well known and flamboyant than Ronnie’s problems, Shoe’s love for the bottle would eventually be his undoing.
By 1980 Shoemaker was in the homestretch of his distinguished career. He was considered by Buddy Delp and many others in racing to be the perfect rider for Spectacular Bid. While many viewed Shoemaker as the tonic for Franklin’s fitful tenure, the truth was Ronnie was a successful and winning rider on Spectacular Bid, and filling his boots wouldn’t be easy, not even for a Shoemaker.
Georgie Velasquez’s short tenure on the horse had been successful; he had won both races that he rode, but the horse clearly did not respond as well for him as he did for Franklin. But Shoemaker had a lighter touch on the reins and, perhaps more important than that, a better chemistry with Buddy.
Under Ronnie, the Bid had broken speed records and won huge races, including two-thirds of the Triple Crown. The horse had also brought home an Eclipse Award in each of his two racing seasons so far, even though he had faced virtually every great horse of his generation.
And yet, under Shoemaker, the best was still to come.
In 1980 Shoe was in the irons for every race the Bid ran. That included nine races, on two coasts, in four different states—California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. He ran on wet racetracks and dry. He ran with different weight allowances and at different lengths. And he ran against the very best competition available, ducking no one.
The Bid started the year in style. On January 5 he kicked off “the Strub Series,” a three-race string all held at Santa Anita. The first of these prestigious and lucrative competitions was the Malibu Stakes. The Bid started the four-horse race slowly and in last place. After the far turn, however, he rumbled all the way to first place and crossed the wire five lengths ahead of his old rival, Flying Paster, who finished second.
Despite the slow start, Bid finished the seven-furlong race in only 1:20 and set a new Santa Anita record, eclipsing the old mark, which went all the way back to 1954. Besides that, he was only a fifth of a second off the world record.
Two weeks later, in the San Fernando Stakes, the Bid had a much more challenging race. He was about ten lengths behind on the backstretch before kicking into another gear and closing the huge gap with an inevitability that was stunning in its ease. When he sidled up next to the leader, Relaunch, a thrilling sequence unfolded.
For a long stretch the two horses battled with a ferocious perfection and equality, and Relaunch showed no craven qualities or signs that he was intimidated. He went stride for stride with his more famous opponent. But after a protracted battle, the Bid finally inched his head and neck in front, and it was as if a seal had been broken. A moment later the white horse that had shown so much game was suddenly a spec in the distance, far behind Spectacular Bid.
Breaking out into the open was almost always a joyful moment for the Bid, a time when he alone was in the eyes of the fans and the cheers were all for him. But this time, he could not enjoy his hard-won lead. Flying Paster, finally demonstrating the rapidity that his trainer and jockey had sworn he had within him, stunned the Bid and approached his neck around the far turn. To Spectacular Bid, Paster was the most unexpected of visitors, like someone knocking on the exterior door of a 747 in midflight.
For a moment it appeared that the burst that had blown the Bid far past Relaunch may have also taken too much out of him. The momentum, it seemed, was clearly with the Paster; Even Shoemaker thought so. “It really gave me a scare,” the great Shoe said. “I thought [Paster] might have us.”
But Spectacular Bid had no such fear or loss of confidence. He showed his heart and neither gave in nor relinquished the lead. He dueled Flying Paster all the way to the wire. The Bid won, but only by a little more than a length. The margin was incredibly small considering that it was one of the most impressive races of one of history’s fastest horses.
The gap between the Bid and Paster and the other two horses was truly impressive. Flying Paster finished fifteen lengths ahead of Relaunch, who finished in third place and a whopping forty-eight lengths ahead of last place Timbo.
The Bid’s winning time was a minute and forty-eight seconds.
The race had been vigorously contested and was exhausting, but Spectacular Bid had only two weeks to recover. A mere fourteen days later he appeared at Santa Anita yet again, for the prestigious Charles H. Strub Stakes, a big money race that would pay the winner about double what Bid had earned just two weeks earlier.
By now, racing world enthusiasts had grown accustomed to Spectacular Bid’s remarkable performances. But nothing they’d seen thus far could compare with what they were about to see at the Strub.
If one believed in preternatural signs, they were all there. Bold Bidder, Spectacular Bid’s sire, had established an earlier Strub record by finishing the race in the blinding speed of 1:59 ⅗ in 1966. His rider that day had been none other than Willie Shoemaker. The record they established was so secure that it stood for more than a decade.
Buddy Delp could read the omens as well as the evidence. “Bid is better now than he has ever been in his life,” he said. “The track is fast, the other horses are good, and if they force things you’ll see a track record.”
There was one thing that Buddy did not mention. In the San Fernando Stakes, Bid and Paster had carried equal weight. In the Strub Stakes, Bid would carry five more pounds than Flying Paster, 126 pounds to Paster’s 121.
Almost fifty-eight thousand people packed Santa Anita on a perfect day, hoping to find out if Buddy was a true prophet whose predictions would come to pass or if it was a new day in which the weight allowance would bring a different result.
Relaunch was certainly prepared for a rematch. Right out of the gate he showed yet again that he had magnificent speed, if only in short bursts. As was his wont, he asserted himself early and quickly sprinted to a six-length lead. Spectacular Bid was again content to be in last place, with Valdez and Flying Paster both ahead of him too.
The Bid seemed unconcerned with his place in the pecking order as he galloped beside the rail. Relaunch kept the lead for most of the backstretch and did so at a blazing pace.
But then Shoemaker emboldened the Bid. The gray colt quickened and expanded his flawless stride. Within seconds he easily closed the large gap between himself and Relaunch. But he picked up a companion on the journey. Valdez strode right alongside Bid, and before long all three horses raced side by side with the Bid in the middle.
But the far turn was like a slingshot for Spectacular Bid. He went into it with his competitors but was flung out of it with great thrust and propulsion. He flew down the homestretch with so much sheer speed that he might have caused a sonic boom. He crossed the wire after traveling one and a quarter miles in only 1:57 ⅘.
It was a new Santa Anita, American, and world record for a dirt race.
The superlatives came in as fast as the horse. Even Paster’s rider, Don Pierce, wouldn’t dispute it. He had been supremely confident of his horse before the Kentucky Derby the year before, but now he was dejected. “Maybe we just can’t beat [Spectacular Bid],” he glumly admitted. Had Paster been born in a different year, who knows what he might have achieved? He clearly had both the speed and the heart of a Triple Crown winner and a “Horse of the Year.” Instead, he had the misfortune of emerging into the world the same year as Spectacular Bid. Because of that, he’d never forge his own path to racing immortality; he was merely destined to be a footnote in Spectacular Bid’s story. Paster faced the Bid five times in his career, and he lost to Bid all five times.
The Strub Stakes was the high point of the Bid’s glorious career, but coming in early February, it was hardly his ending. The rest of his four-year-old season still awaited. After one more race at Santa Anita, a victory by five lengths, Spectacular Bid moved on to Hollywood Park and won two more races by wide margins. After that, it was on to Chicago, where he won the Washington Park Handicap by ten lengths.
Finally, in August the Bid came back east. On a streak of eight straight victories, most of them dominating, he went to Monmouth Park, on the Jersey shore, for the Haskell Handicap. There, he raced against a field of lesser competition that included four undistinguished males and a filly with the melodic name of Glorious Song. She was his most formidable competition.
The Bid carried 132 pounds in the race, the most of his career. And with that to her advantage, Glorious Song put up a fight. She and the Bid were right beside each other going into the far turn. Treating her with complete equality, Bid pulled away from Glorious Song in the homestretch, as he had done against so many male competitors. But he beat her by only a length and three quarters.
It was noted by reporters, however, that Shoemaker had barely applied the whip. Nobody believed that the superhorse had run his hardest. The relaxed ride, despite the filly’s spirited competition, was a sign that Delp and Shoemaker were taking measures to avoid the handicappers’ assigning them an even higher weight for the upcoming Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park. Had the Bid smoked the field at Monmouth while carrying 132 pounds, he might have been looking at an assignment of 137 pounds or more in New York.
The Meyerhoffs and Delp already felt that there was a great deal of thinly veiled disdain for them by officials at the New York Racing Association (NYRA). They based their foreboding hunch on the many fiascos that had surrounded their ill-fated participation in the last Belmont Stakes. And clearly they had a point.
NYRA racing secretary and handicapper Lenny Hale, the man who decided the weight assignments at Belmont Park, took the opportunity to taunt Meyerhoff and Delp. “The mark of the truly great horse, the horse remembered for decades, is the one that carries the weight and beats quality horses,” Hale sniffed. “So far Spectacular Bid has beaten precious little.”
It was a ludicrous statement, but Hale persisted. He compared Bid to Forego, the sainted New York–based thoroughbred who had won eight Eclipse Awards and who had won the Marlboro Cup in 1976 with Shoemaker aboard and carrying 137 pounds.
Hale assigned only 136 pounds to Spectacular Bid’s broad back, prompting a question from Forego’s owner, Martha Gerry, that any reasonable fan might’ve asked.
“If Forego carried 137 [pounds],” she queried, “why can’t Spectacular Bid?”
“Because Spectacular Bid is not as good as Forego,” Hale told the shocked Mrs. Gerry.
In fact, giving Spectacular Bid 136 pounds was a brilliant piece of revenge. It was still a very high weight allowance, but at one pound less than Forego had carried, it was impossible for the Bid to equal that legendary horse’s accomplishments. For Bid’s team, it was a no-win situation.
Delp, understandably, was livid. In his mind the question wasn’t why Hale was asking the Bid to carry one pound less than Forego had, but why he was being asked to carry twelve more pounds than Secretariat had for the same race. It was also eight more pounds than Seattle Slew had toted just two years earlier.
Affirmed had carried more than 130 pounds only twice in his career. Spectacular Bid had done it more than five times and had won all five races handily, and yet Hale questioned his greatness.
Meyerhoff and Delp were sure that the real reason for the high allowance and cutting words was that Hale was taking advantage of them. Hale’s comparison of Spectacular Bid to Forego was bogus in their book. Forego was a gelding; his owners had no future breeding earnings to worry about if Hale’s weight assignment proved too much. If Forego had broken down on the track and died a gruesome death due to the excessive weight he was asked to carry, that would have been tragic, but it would not have been a business disaster.
To ask the Bid, who still had all the manly equipment he should have, to carry almost the same weight that Forego had done simply didn’t make sense. If the Bid broke down, tens of millions of dollars for the Meyerhoffs, and a tidy sum to Delp too, were all at stake.
It is not surprising that Meyerhoff and Delp made the business decision to withhold Spectacular Bid from the Marlboro. They might have looked like babies, but only one year before Laz Barrera had made the same decision for Affirmed.
Harry and Buddy could opt out if they wanted to; there was nothing to compel them to race. But in making that decision, they showed up Hale, a powerful man in racing, and in effect they made him look like a vindictive and petty ass.
In fact, Hale was applauded by the other owners for his stance. They saw no point in racing the Bid under equal circumstances, but racing fans had a different point of view. They believed Hale’s antics had only prevented them from seeing the best horse in the nation for the second straight year.
Buddy Delp and his team also took some heat. No less an authority than Red Smith taunted Buddy and Harry in his column when he noted that by refusing Hale’s weight assignment for Spectacular Bid, they had in essence “chickened out.”
Smith explained that there were expectations, even obligations, that went along with owning and managing an exceptional thoroughbred. “When a horseman dreams of a truly great horse,” Smith wrote, “he pictures one that wins the futurities as a 2-year-old, adds the Triple Crown at 3, then goes on to the handicaps where he gives weight and still wins.”
Smith believed Bid had fulfilled most of the menu, but he nevertheless had yet to prove his place in history. The fault, he implied, was all Delp’s and Harry’s for complaining and taking their horse home.
Showing up Lenny Hale was undoubtedly satisfying, but it proved a short-term pleasure. Just a few weeks later the Bid came back to Hale’s domain, Belmont Park, for the Woodward Stakes. A small slate of good horses was scheduled to oppose him, including Dr. Patches, Temperence Hill, and the talented Winter’s Tale.
One by one they all made their excuses and withdrew from the race. Dr. Patches and Temperence Hill simply decided that they had no chance, after all, and gave up without any real reason stated. Winter’s Tale was the most likely challenger, but he scratched too when his handlers claimed he had a chipped bone in one of his forelegs.
In a racing rarity called a “walkover,” the Bid went out on the track and ran all by himself. Although it almost never happened, a walkover was the highest demonstration of respect, like intentionally walking a baseball batter with the bases loaded.
In fact, Bid’s walkover was the first one in the United States in more than thirty years. It was believed that in all of U.S. racing history there had been only about thirty-two walkovers, and seven of those had been run by steeplechasers. The last one, coincidentally, had occurred at the old Havre de Grace race track just a few minutes from Buddy Delp’s childhood home.
Despite the lack of competition, Shoemaker and the Bid put on a memorable show for the fans. The horse smoked his way around the track and finished the one and a quarter miles in only 2:02 ⅖. The track record, set by Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew only two years earlier, was two minutes flat.
The walkover might have been unplanned and unusual, but it gave the Bid another unique feature for his resume. It recalled the legendary Citation’s walkover at the Pimlico Special in 1948 with Eddie Arcaro aboard. Citation crossed the wire at 1:59 ⅘, a considerably faster time than he had clocked in the Preakness Stakes with top-level competition to push him. His time in that one (though on a bad track) had been 2:02 ⅖.
Buddy Delp was initially thrilled with the walkover. The reluctance of fine horses and respected handlers to compete against the Bid provided credence to Buddy’s relentless crowing about possessing the greatest horse in the world. It was hard to disagree with him when no one dared challenge him.
And yet the fact that nobody stepped up to race the Bid was peculiar. After all, there was no particular disgrace in losing to him, regardless of the gap, and a lot of easy money was to be made for merely running and finishing either second or third.
The first clue why they all refused to race against the Bid presented itself the moment the walkover ended. That’s when Harry Meyerhoff collected his check for $73,300, or about half of what he had expected as the winner. Harry wasn’t aware of the condition book that spelled out the reduced fee in the case of a walkover.
In that context, there were rumors that NYRA had bullied the other owners into scratching from the race with the intent of paying out less money and thus saving about $85,000 by not paying the Bid’s full fee as the winner and also not paying the rest of the field at all.
Harry was livid of course. He had gone to great pains to do his part for both the race and racing. He had paid his team to go to New York, and he had incurred all of the associated expenses. More than that, his horse was clearly the star attraction, not only of that day but also perhaps of the entire decade. It was Harry and his team who had drawn the spectators and no one else.
But for all that effort, Harry felt stiffed. He conceded that Hale and NYRA had the right to pay out less, per the condition book, but he felt that it was, all things considered, the wrong thing to do.
Teresa, who’d grown up in upstate New York in a community where everyone was more or less like her, couldn’t fathom how or why she and her husband would be treated so unfairly. “Why would they do this to us?” she asked Harry.
Meyerhoff shrugged his shoulders. “Anti-Semitism,” he said.
Perhaps paranoia was getting the better of Harry. Although he had confronted anti-Semitism on the racing circuit, it is unlikely his problems in New York had anything to do with his exotic ancestry.
The officials’ behavior was probably just another shot across the bow in the war of words that had escalated between the Bid’s team and NYRA since Angel Cordero had plowed his horse into Ronnie Franklin’s colt in the days before the Belmont Stakes. That time, New York officials had basically looked the other way. The reduced fee could have also been payback for the Bid’s rancorous departure from the Marlboro field just a couple of weeks earlier, when both sides looked like they were trying to one-up the other.
Regardless of how Harry privately felt about the slight and the snobby northeastern elites who he felt looked down on him, in public he maintained his usual cool. Anyway, the money was inconsequential to him. The Bid had already won almost $3 million over the course of his short-but-brilliant career. And Harry had recently finalized the horse’s record $22 million in syndication fees. So Meyerhoff and his family investors could absorb the loss while feeling no pain.
The ugly gesture, if indeed that’s what it was, was an empty one. And everyone, including Harry, simply moved on. Anyway, the next race, the Jockey Gold Cup, also at Belmont Park, featured a purse worth more than half a million dollars. It was, in fact, the richest race in the history of the United States.
The Bid, of course, was the bankable attraction. He was ginning up interest and driving up purse money. But, as with so many of his other races, his presence came with a shroud of mystery, an element of conflict and controversy, and a surprise ending.
By now race officials, journalists, and fans were all used to the melodrama that Buddy unpacked wherever he went. Even so, his behavior at the Gold Cup was downright bizarre. In a weird incident that echoed the Bid’s Belmont Stakes experience, Buddy seemed to harbor some secret information about the health of his horse.
First, rumors of unknown origin swirled that Spectacular Bid was unsound. But at 8:30 a.m. on race day, Harry Meyerhoff did everything he could to dispute the notion. Standing in front of the barn swigging a breakfast beer as though he didn’t have a care in the world, he casually kibitzed with reporters and gently bragged that his horse could beat anyone in the field. He also told them that he wanted the huge Gold Cup purse in order to put the Bid over the $3 million mark in career earnings, which would make him the only horse in history to do so.
Harry’s happy-go-lucky demeanor in no way indicated that he was the owner of a valuable commodity that was in any danger. Buddy, too, attempted to reinforce the notion that the Bid was sound and prepared to compete, but he couldn’t resist stirring the pot. “I have heard all the rumors about my horse not running in the Gold Cup,” he said, “but the rumors aren’t true. [Spectacular Bid] went out on the race track this morning and galloped perfectly. I would say he was even money to start.”
If the rumors weren’t true and the Bid had galloped “perfectly,” why was he only “even money” to race?
Buddy didn’t say.
At 9:00 a.m. the mystery went even deeper. The track veterinarian, Manny Gilman, went to examine the Bid and certify that he was sound. That was an expected, even ordinary, procedure, but when he got there, the celebrated horse was standing in a tub of ice water and unavailable. The doctor left, unhappily, growling that he would be back to complete his duty.
But when Dr. Gilman returned an hour later, the Bid’s handlers still refused him access to the horse. At this unusual display of disrespect, Gilman stalked off and vowed to report the strange behavior to the higher authorities. “I’ll go to the stewards and tell them that I tried to do my job twice and was refused,” the good doctor said.
This time there was no Dr. Harthill to sneak in and secretly treat Spectacular Bid. There was only a kind of candor, though it was tardy in coming. At 4:00 p.m., Buddy finally made an announcement. “It’s over now,” Buddy said, “but it was a great ride with Bid.”
He’d just told the crowd that his magnificent horse had retired and would not race in that day’s event or ever again.
“The problem is with his left front ankle,” Buddy said. “He has had a problem with the ankle since he was a two-year-old. I would say he’s 98 percent of himself right now, and Bid at 98 percent could beat the field that’s entered for the Gold Cup with no problems. But he’s not 100 percent, and I’m not going to send him out on the racetrack when he’s not 100 percent. It’s as simple as that. The decision to scratch him was mine.”
As he spoke, Buddy was cascaded with boos by the angry fans. And why not? He’d basically just told them that he had known his horse would not run since that morning. But in an attempt to frustrate NYRA officials he’d kept the decision to scratch all to himself for the entire day. In trying to annoy them, he had toyed with the fans and made them suffer.
The fans were the ones who were excited to see his horse race; they were the ones who left work to be there; drove through traffic; and plunked their money down on food, useless bets, and other incidentals—all under the impression that they would enjoy a memorable night in the presence of greatness. Instead, Buddy had played with their emotions and thwarted them from seeing the horse. All of this in an attempt to make the officials look bad.
But it all boomeranged back on him.
The Bid should have retired to great cheers and the good wishes of everyone. After all, he was an anomaly of nature, an ideal, a once-in-a-lifetime creation of God that hinted at the possibility of perfection. He should have moved on like Secretariat had, with the awe and adulation of the racing world, the press, and the fans. Instead, Buddy made Spectacular Bid’s exit ridiculous, a carnival of anger and an unpleasant memory for all who were there.
Even Buddy’s infuriating antics couldn’t diminish the horse’s profound accomplishments. Spectacular Bid had won twenty-six of his thirty lifetime races and retired with a higher winning percentage than Secretariat or any other horse who had earned more than $1 million.
The Bid had won on both coasts and in between. Racing against the very best horses of his generation, he had managed long winning streaks, one of twelve in a row, and another of nine. In 1980 he had won every single race in which he ran and became the first horse in almost thirty years to go undefeated in his handicap campaign.
The Bid was even greater than the public knew because he had accomplished all of these things with a team that was as dysfunctional and chaotic as it was talented. Meyerhoff and Buddy were brilliant men. They had the unusual accomplishment of not only choosing and training the great horse but also, simultaneously, his young jockey. And in an incredibly short period they had raised both horse and rider to extraordinary levels of accomplishment.
But along the path, ego and secrecy stepped in. The owner and trainer also hid their own fragilities and weaknesses. They weren’t really up for the task of caring for teenage boys. They didn’t quite possess the proper qualities or fully accept all of the responsibilities. That’s what had led to the manic performance at the Florida Derby, the mysterious loss at the Belmont Stakes, and, far more seriously, Ronnie and Gerald’s budding addictions and spiraling lives.
Their horse might have been the fastest thing on four legs, but undeniably he was defined as much by his stunning losses as his brilliant performances—more so, in fact. That would be the burden they would all bear forever more.
Angel Cordero Jr., the charismatic, brilliant, and ruthless rider who had once coveted the horse and then did everything in his power to defeat him, summed up Spectacular Bid as no one else could. Asked if the Bid was the greatest horse he’d ever seen, he scoffed at the notion. “Not to me,” he said.
Cordero discounted the blazing speed and rendered the eye-popping numbers meaningless. It all meant nothing, he said, in comparison to the embarrassing failure at the Belmont Stakes. “I don’t care about time,” he said with firm conviction. “Time only counts when it comes to jail and hookers. . . . Winning is the only thing I care about.”