view raw text
* : . ; ; , [ ; [ ! Diplomatic Eric I At Career Height I Summer Tans Rider Rates H Dancer Superior to Jet H Pilot, Victor of 47 Roses ■ By BOB HORWOOD H Staff Correspondent Eric Guerin, the quiet-spoken, intenseB serious Louisianan, who will ride SummH Tan in todays Derby, won the classic cH Jet Pilot, but believes that he was beateB in the race on a better horse. That, course, was Native Dancer, the Alfred M Vanderbilt gray whose only defeat was thaH heartbreaking nose margin by which DarH Star led him two years ago. H It would not be diplomatic to ask GuerirH and one could only expect a diplomatic answer, whether or not he rates Mrs. PireH stones gallant bay the equal of his conH tract employers gray "Horse of the YearH of 1954. ■ Has Ridden Many Good Horses ■ Eric has ridden many other good horseH since he first found his way to the winner* circle astride J. Fred Wyses Sweet Shop afl Narragansett, August 29, 1941. Unfortu-H nately, for Guerin, soon after he broke hifl maiden on Sweet Shop he started breakinn most of the bones in his body, including! his skull. It was only a few days afteifl that Initial victory that Eric fractured hisM skull and for a few more days was con-B sidered unlikely to live, much less to be-H come one of Americas great riders. Bill Winfrey; who trains the VanderbiltB horses, recently remarked that he thought* •that Guerin was riding in the best formB of his career, despite the fact that thel thirty-year-old product of the bayous has! been battling weight for more than eightl years. He weighed only 100 pounds whenl he came up under the tutelage of his I cousin, Norman LeBlanc, but soon became a regular visitor to the hot box and how is pared down to the bone to make 115. He can do that, however, and still be as strong in .a finish as any rider in the country. Rated on Par With Woodhouse Indeed, many horsemen rate Guerin and Hedley Woodhouse on a par, and ahead of any of their contemporaries at this writing, including Arcaro and Shoemaker. It takes good horses to make good riders, of course, and Guerin has been up on many other topnotchers besides Jet Pilot and Native Dancer. Among the best were Next Move, a grand filly; the hard-hitting So-cial Outcast, Boston Doge, and, of course, Summer Tan. Guerin also rode last years three -year-old champion, High Gun, in the Belmont Stakes and, after the race, trainer Max Hirsch gave the boy full honors, saying, "Whats true is true, most of the credit goes to Guerin." A happily married family man, Guerins son Ronnie is probably as familiar and almost as mysterious to television fans as Jimmy Durantes Mrs. Calabash. Eric never fails in the course of his many trips to the microphone after stakes to call out, "Hi, Ronnie!"
