Pincay the Perfect Messenger for McAnally's Honor

Laffit Pincay remembers the first winner he rode for Ron McAnally, 55 years ago. No kidding. He really does. "It was a 2-year-old filly," Pincay said. "Seagoing Barb? No. Something else with 'Barb.' A baby race at Santa Anita." Give that man a gold star. The date was Feb. 2, 1967, a Thursday afternoon, before a typically mellow weekday crowd of more than 22,000 customers. Weather clear. Temperature 70 degrees. Making her first start among 11 going hell-bent down the three-furlong straightaway in front of the stands at Santa Anita Park, Talking Barb (her stablemate was Seagoing Barb) took Pincay right to the lead and turned back heavily favored Dovecote and Esteban Medina to win by a length and a half for McAnally and his client, Mrs. H.C. Morton. The whole thing was over in 33 seconds. It was also the beginning of a beautiful friendship, both on and off the track, one that will savor the latest of many cherished moments Aug. 27 at Del Mar. That's when Pincay will present McAnally with the Laffit Pincay Jr. Award, an honor that recognizes a member of the West Coast racing community for all sorts of good reasons, including accomplishment, integrity, and service to the industry. The Pincay Award, in the form of a bronze statuette crafted by the inimitable Nina Kaiser, is also that rare tribute not named for a jockey who was killed in action, those including Mike Venezia, George Woolf, Avelino Gomez, and Jack Robinson. At 75, Pincay is alive and thriving in a retirement forced upon him in 2003 when a fall at Santa Anita fractured a cervical vertebra. At the time he had won 9,530 races, top of the heap until Russell Baze took over on his way to 12,000-plus. In addition, the Pincay Award has been spread across the racing landscape, honoring not only jockeys but also trainers, owners, breeders, members of racing management, and officials. The last trainer to be honored was Art Sherman, the man behind two-time Horse of the Year California Chrome. McAnally turned 90 in July, so it was about time the local industry aimed the spotlight his way. No trainer has been on the West Coast scene longer than the three-time Eclipse Award winner and Hall of Famer. In the late 1950s, McAnally was working for his uncle, Reggie Cornell, who trained a string for Calumet Farm and made headlines with the Cal-bred stretch runner Silky Sullivan, winner of the 1958 Santa Anita Derby. McAnally's earliest impression as a public trainer came in 1961 when he took Donut King to New York to win the Champagne Stakes. By the mid-1960s, the McAnally stable was a growing concern among a salty bunch of California trainers on their way to the Hall of Fame, including Charlie Whittingham, Robert Wheeler, Laz Barrera, Buster Millerick, and Jack Van Berg, as well as invading Easterners such as Jim Maloney, Eddie Neloy, and Elliott Burch. Meanwhile, after a promising start in Panama, Pincay made his first stateside splash during the summer of 1966 at Arlington Park, then headed to Santa Anita for the season opener on Dec. 26, 1966. Three days later he celebrated his 20th birthday. "Ronnie was a big supporter of mine from the beginning," Pincay said. "Camilo Marin, my agent, was one of his good friends. I remember Camilo taking me to Ron's house. I kept looking at all his pictures of winners on the walls. Good races. Good horses. Great jockeys. I remember thinking that someday I wanted to be on that wall." Eventually, Pincay had a McAnally gallery of his own. Their first major collaboration came in the 1976 Santa Anita Derby (G1) with An Act, a Pretense colt whose American flag silks celebrated the nation's bicentenary. In late 1980, McAnally called upon Pincay to ride John Henry, just then putting a cherry on top of his first grass championship. Beginning with the 1980 Oak Tree Invitational (G1T), they rattled off five straight major stakes victories, including the 1981 Santa Anita Handicap (G1). "Ron always had his horses very sharp for the big races," Pincay said. "I was very lucky with him." McAnally brought Bayakoa (ARG) into Pincay's life in May of 1988, then she promptly disappeared. It was six months before he rode the wild-eyed Argentinian again, while the McAnally crew worked hard to channel her energies. "She wasn't running bad, but she was not running to her capabilities," Pincay said. "One day he put me on her again, and boy, she ran big. From then on she just kept winning." Following that 12-length allowance race score in January of 1989, Pincay and Bayakoa won eight of their next 10 collaborations, all grade 1 or 2 events. Their finest hour came in the 1989 Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1) at Gulfstream Park, in which Pincay rated the fiery mare on a loose rein to defeat a four-horse Wayne Lukas entry. They were also in history's spotlight a year later at Belmont Park, where Pincay walked away shaken from a hollow victory in a Distaff that cost Go for Wand her life. On the track with NBC's Bob Neumeier in the wake of the tragedy, fresh from a winner's circle draped in black crepe, McAnally uttered the words that have clung to him since like a noble tattoo: "They give their lives for our enjoyment," the trainer said. In fact, McAnally's poignant comment was preceded by, "As my wife said...," for it was Debbie McAnally, standing alongside, who spoke up as her husband fought back tears, "They do it for us, give their lives for our pleasure and enjoyment." Pincay and McAnally come from a school—call it "old" if you wish—that looks upon racehorses as fellow travelers in a hard business. They are to be diligently cared for, not coddled or treated as pets, but respected as athletes asked to perform at physical extremes. Being so viscerally close to the death of Go for Wand rocked them both, but life went on, and they were far from finished. They dazzled the turf world in 1991 with the clever His Majesty colt Tight Spot, winner of the Arlington Million (G1T) and an Eclipse Award. In 1993 they swooped into New York to win the Metropolitan Handicap (G1) with Ibero, another Argentine ace. Then later that year it was McAnally and Pincay again to win the Hollywood Futurity (G1) with Verne Winchell's Valiant Nature, owned by the man who provided the trainer with Donut King 32 years before. McAnally trains only a handful of horses these days, mostly bred and owned by the trainer and his wife. As with many horsemen of his generation, McAnally is reluctant to go quietly into a retirement that would be missing the daily buzz of the shed row, and that's for him to decide. Consider then the Pincay Award, presented by the man himself, to be a way of saying thank you to a Thoroughbred racing legend still walking among us. Goodbye can wait its turn.