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Erb Decisively Shakes Label As Just TwoY TwoYearOld earOld Rider Veteran Nebraskan Emerges As Top Stakes Boy Tries For Second Straight Derby DerbyCHURCHILL CHURCHILL DOWNS Louisville Ky May 3 It took quite a while but Dave Erb finally and decisively has shaken off his label as strictly a twoyearold rider and has emerged as a top stakes jockey whose services are sought by some of Americas leading stables stablesThe The 34yearold Nebraskan has come in ¬ to his own the past couple of seasons win ¬ ning stakes with Needles Swaps Swoons Son and others This will be his fourth Derby and he will be shooting for his sec ¬ ond straight win having scored with Needles last year yearRode Rode Swaps in Californian CalifornianFor For a jockey pressing 35 Erb had to wait a long while for recognition and success He has been rated a smooth polished per ¬ former for many years but the fact that he had done so extremely almost exclu ¬ sively well with twoyearolds early in his career typed him and horsemen were reluctant to give him more than very oc ¬ casional opportunities aboard top older horses Since the advent of Needles how ¬ ever Erb has had few sleepless nights wor ¬ rying about who his next stakes mount would be beErb Erb was so highly regarded by Rex Ells ¬ worth and Mesh Tenney that when Willie Shoemaker was sitting out a suspension two years ago they called on Dave to ride Swaps in the Californian Stakes at Holly ¬ wood Park He accepted the challenge and piloted Swaps to a world record perform ¬ ance of 140 for a mile and a sixteenth sixteenthUp Up until a few years ago Erb rode mostly in California where he first acquired the twoyearold label Of late he has made Chicago his home base but he has ap ¬ peared in the East and South wherever his stakes engagements take him himErb Erb was born in Grand Island Neb and got his start riding races on the halfmile fair tracks in Nebraska and South Dakota He won his first race at a bigtime track on Chronology at Oaklawn Park March 8 1939 1939He He says he got his biggest thrill in racing by winning two stakes with the sixyearold MarkYeWell in 1955 when the veteran captured the Armour Memorial and Stars and Stripes Handicap in Chicago
