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Parrott remains 'big' part of Derby history
By Bill Finley
Special to ESPN.com
Who's the only fat guy ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby?
Bobby Parrott's life, his career, his past, his present are more than
the answer to a trivia question. Sometimes, though, you couldn't tell.
Oliver Lewis won the first Kentucky Derby, Chris Antley the last. Eddie Arcaro and Bill Hartack have won the most, five each. Bill Shoemaker has had more mounts than anyone else with with 26. Since the established Derby weight became 126 pounds in 1920, one Robert Parrott is the only jockey ever to ride overweight.
He tipped the scales at a beefy 127 pounds aboard the infamous Saigon Warrior in 1971. In a business where most jockeys keep their eight in the neighborhood of 111 pounds, it's never been done before or since.
You need not remind him?
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They told me I'd be a pound overweight
and so I asked Mr. Day if he wanted to make a change. He said that he'd still ride me if I
were five pounds overweight. ” |
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— Bobby Parrott |
"No, it's all right; it's nice to have people remember you." said the soft-spoke Kentuckian, now 60 and a handyman working in the Louisville area.
Even if it's for all the wrong reasons.
For so many years, Parrott's career was going just fine. He was a capable journeyman rider at the Midwest tracks and accepted his first and only other Derby mount in 1966 aboard 14th-place finisher Beau Sub. In the spring of 1969, Parrott had 22 wins on the year and was riding in good form at the Oaklawn Park meet. Until he experienced every jockey's worst nightmare.
"I fell at Oaklawn and fractured my right leg, from the hip to the knee," he explained over a cold beer the other day at the Peppermint Lounge, three miles up the road from Churchill Downs. "Heard the head doctor say, 'What a shame this boy has to lose his career, much less his leg.' I jumped off the operating table and said, 'Doc, if you can't fix it, get somebody who can. Money is no object.'"
Plan B was settled upon, a long and torturous recuperation period that began with a full year of bed rest. They didn't even put a cast on the leg; Parrott just had to lay there, 24-7.
"After all that, I had to learn how to walk all over again," he remembered. "I went back to Hot Springs (Arkansas) right before 1971 and started running up and down those mountains there."
Enter Mr. Charles M. Day, a Texas oil man and owner who had recently started training his own horses. Day was getting up in his years and wanted to run a horse in the Kentucky Derby. Even a horse as bad as Saigon Warrior.
"When you get to be my age you've got to shoot the dice quickly," he
quipped.
Saigon Warrior came into the Derby sporting a career record of 1-for-17,
his lone win coming in a maiden race. He warmed up for the Derby -- with a
defeat in an allowance race at Oaklawn Park. He was regularly trounced
in stakes competition.
And Day just had to have Parrott ride his horse. The two had hooked up a
few years back and won some races together and the eccentric
owner-trainer figured Parrott was the best man for the job. Never mind
that he hadn't ridden in two years and was fighting to get his weight
under control because he wasn't yet fit.
"I said to him that I hadn't ridden in a long time, but if you can get him three-quarters of the way around I'll get him the rest of the way," Parrott said. "I think he thought he had his best shot with me riding. He knew me very well and he liked my outlook. I thought every horse I rode would win, whether they were 99-1 or 1-9."
The Kentucky Derby was literally Parrott's first ride since the spill. He weighed 124 pounds the day before, he said, but his weight fluctuated over night and he weighed in at 126 3/4 pounds for the Derby.
"The clerk of scales said he could get by with a half-pound, but not
three-quarters," Parrott said. "He asked me if I just couldn't go in the
bathroom (and vomit) or do something. I said, 'No sir, I've been
reducing pretty hard just to get back to this weight and I can't do
anymore.'
"They told me I'd be a pound overweight and so I asked Mr. Day if he wanted to make a change. He said that he'd still ride me if I were five pounds overweight."
He might as well have been 50 pounds overweight. It made no difference. One of the slowest horses ever to run in the Kentucky Derby, Saigon Warrior didn't just lose, he lost by the length of the stretch. Eighty-four lengths and nearly 17 seconds after Canonero II crossed the wire a winner, a tired Saigon Warrior stumbled home last of 20.
His moment of infamy was largely overshadowed by Canonero's dramatic win, but Parrott couldn't escape all criticism.
"One reporter from New York made me mad," he said. "He wrote that here
was a rider who cared so little about the Kentucky Derby that evidently
he was out at McDonalds the night before. He wrote that I didn't give a
damn. That wasn't it at all. It wasn't that I didn't care. You've got to
ride races to get fit and get your weight down."
His battle with weight a problem throughout his career, Parrott hung it up in 1972. He goes to Churchill Downs as a fan every now and then, but hasn't seen a Derby since he retired. That won't change Saturday. He'll watch on TV from his home a few miles from the track.
Like every other Kentuckian, he'll probably get a little choked up when the horses come on the track Saturday and they play "My Old Kentucky Home." He was a big part of the Kentucky Derby once. You might say too big.
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