Beyond the realm of most mortals
Seventy-eight-year-old Joe Aitcheson, Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey, routinely saddles up at Laurel Park.
by Sean Clancy.

Joseph Leiter Aitcheson Jr. stood tall in the irons as Diamond Rush made his way around the turn in the middle of a routine mile and a quarter gallop on a recent early fall morning at Laurel Park
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Conversation stopped along the rail. The rider—now an almost unbelievable 78 years old—had mesmerized onlookers once again.

Aitcheson won 440 races from 1956 to 1979, setting an American steeplechasing record that almost certainly never will be broken. The Maryland native consistently rode more than 150 races per year, winning 40 in 1964, the most in history, during an era when the New York Racing Association and major tracks elsewhere provided consistent platforms for steeplechasing. It was the old days, when tracks had permanent brush and hurdle courses.

Now, the busiest jockey barely rides 100 races per year, and winning 20 can usually clinch a title. Aitcheson’s record is a little circumstance—he rode more than 2,400 races—and a lot achievement. No one did it like Joe.

Think American steeple­chase jockey, think Joe Aitche­son.
Paddy Smithwick, Dooley Adams, Jerry Fishback and Tommy Walsh round out the top five on the only list that matters to an American steeplechase jockey. They’ve each been retired for at least two decades. Jeff Teter and Blythe Miller are the only two jockeys to eclipse the 200-win mark in the modern era, but they retired less than halfway to Aitcheson’s landmark. Chip Miller, the leading active jockey, owns 189 wins in his career.

Racing’s Hall of Fame welcomed Aitcheson in 1978. Two years earlier, he won the F. Ambrose Clark Award, given to “individuals who have done the most to promote, improve, and encourage the growth and welfare of steeplechasing.”

For the past 10 years or so, Aitcheson has been going to Laurel a couple of times a week to gallop horses for trainer Tim Keefe, whose stable plaque, hanging at the end of his barn, depicts a chestnut horse named Aitcheson Lane.

Lean and wiry, Aitcheson doesn’t ask for breaks. Keefe started putting Aitcheson on more joggers than gallopers a few years ago, and the Hall of Famer said he really didn’t think it was worth his time to come out only to jog a horse. Another time, when Keefe’s exercise riders were having trouble with a roguish colt, Aitcheson took Keefe aside and subtly volunteered to straighten out the horse.

“I’ve known him for a long time, and he never ceases to amaze me,” Keefe said. “Sure, it worries me that he’ll get hurt. But it doesn’t worry me nearly as much as him not riding, not having something to do. Horses have always gone better for him than most people. I used to gallop this one horse; I couldn’t ever get him to relax—he would pull and pull. Joe got on him, and he galloped like a pony. It was humbling in a way, but then you think about it and realize that it’s Joe Aitcheson.”

Named the Maryland Horse Council’s Horseman of the Year for 2006, Aitcheson was honored with a victory gallop at Shawan Downs on Septem­ber 30. Some of the jockeys who shared the room with Aitcheson rode through the stretch to celebrate Joe Aitcheson Day at the Hunt Valley race meet.

“When you’re as old as I am and they find out you’re still around, they like to do things for you,” Aitcheson said when congratulated on the honor. “I’m thrilled. It’s nothing like getting in the Hall of Fame or anything like that, but it’s a nice thing. I even wrote a three or four-minute speech. I had to bring the paper because I can’t remember anything any more.”

Aitcheson is flattered by the honor but he’d really like to jump a fence or two for old time’s sake. The man was born to be a jump jockey. When most steeplechase jockeys retire, they’re glad it’s over and wonder if they did it too long. They regret the maiden claimer who fell at Tryon and gave them a limp. They wish they’d skipped the timber race at Glenwood Park that fall day. Maybe they should have gone to college.

Aitcheson? He’d come back tomorrow and do it all over again. “I loved it all. I loved riding jumpers,” Aitcheson said from Keefe’s tackroom. “If I didn’t do that, I would have been pushing a wheelbarrow for a bricklayer or helping a carpenter, something blue collar.

“Surprisingly, I don’t have many aches and pains.”
Of course, Aitcheson’s idea of aches and pains may differ from that of the rest of us. He boxed in high school, through one semester at the University of Maryland and through two stints in the Navy, the latter during the Korean War. He had his first fall in a pony race at 5, hit the ground in his first try in the Maryland Hunt Cup and fell four times in 10 rides (breaking his right collarbone twice) in his first year as a professional. In between, he nearly died on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean.

After retiring from riding races, Aitcheson galloped for trainer King Leatherbury, once getting on 32 horses in one day. During his years with Leatherbury, Aitcheson would gallop with a notepad in his shirt pocket and jot down the runners who were sore in order to tell the boss later.

A broken right collarbone? Aitcheson invented the one-arm shoulder pad.
Severe whiplash? He sneaked out of the hospital, got two men and a boy to give him a leg up on Happy Intellectual and then piloted the horse to victory in the 1977 New York Turf Writers Cup.

Double vision? The riding legend learned to shut one eye when the fences came.
Aitcheson used to rent a room in my family’s house near Delaware Park each summer, when the jumpers made their annual stop at the Stanton, Del., oval. One day my mother made him an iced tea and set it on the table in front of him. My hero took a honey dauber, spun it around the honey bowl and went to put it in his glass. The honey dauber hit the table, smack, next to the glass. Honey pooled in a glob on the table.
“Darn, double vision,” Aitcheson said, taking the dauber and aiming at the second glass he saw.

The year was 1977. Aitche­son won a maiden race on Durbish and a claiming race on Sun Sign that season at Dela­ware Park, while finishing the year as the fourth leading jockey; he announced his retirement at the end of the year. That lasted one season. He came back in 1979 and rode a few races, falling on champion sprinter-turned-steeplechaser Gallant Bob at Saratoga before calling it quits for good.

Well, until riding in a retired jockeys’ race on the flat at Fair Hill in 1988 and one jump race at Delaware Park in 1990. He wanted to ride in 2000, but the National Steeplechase Association wouldn’t allow it; he still holds a slight grudge.

Jimmy Murphy, champion steeplechase jockey in 1959 and a longtime Maryland-based trainer, rode about eight years with Aitcheson. Murphy respected Aitcheson as a man and as a jockey—then and now.

“He was always quiet, never said a word,” Murphy said. “He’d look like he hypnotized himself, laying in bed and staring at the wall of the jocks’ room. He was good to me. I was riding Amber Diver and I got days [a suspension for an infraction of the riding rules]. Couldn’t ride him. Joe got the ride—he won by 10 or 12 lengths, the [Temple] Gwathmey. Joe split the purse with me.”

Murphy won 185 races, good enough for eighth on the all-time list, before making a solid career as a trainer.

Aitcheson tried training for one year after retiring, but it didn’t last. Aitcheson was different.

According to Murphy: “When I quit, I knew it was time to quit. I was getting a little leery, wouldn’t take a shot. I did it 19 years; that was plenty. It’s all Joe lived for. He blocked everything else out. I guess that’s why he got divorced. He’d ride anything, didn’t care. He was always down there, saving ground; he always kept his head down. He’d ride a billy goat. Right now, if someone told him he could ride a race, he would ride it.”

Aitcheson was married three times and has a daughter, Jody, from his second marriage. He has one grandson. Several years ago, when his family farm near Laurel was sold, Aitcheson moved into a retirement community, taking a place on the sixth floor so he can stay fit climbing the stairs. Aitcheson’s sister, Jane Cartwright, and her husband, retired Maryland trainer Ron Cartwright, live nearby.

If a man can be a man’s man, then Aitcheson was a jump jockey’s jump jockey. Born in Olney, Md., on July 31, 1928, Aitcheson was the son of a Maryland horseman who also pitched for the Baltimore Orioles in the minor leagues and the Brooklyn Dodgers in the majors. Aitcheson followed his dad into horsemanship.

His father (who went by his middle name, Leiter) operated a riding stable with show horses, hunters and a few race horses. Aitcheson Jr. rode in the occasional show, but it was the races after the shows that attracted him. Brush, timber, flat races —a little side-betting—and a career was born.

“I remember riding my little pony in a pony race,” Aitcheson recalled. “They say I was 5. My little pony pulled up real short, and I fell off. I remember my dad running over, scooping me up, holding me in his arms and swinging me around to keep me from crying. That was the first one.

“Then I remember coming down to Laurel and seeing a jump race; that was a big deal to me. I had foxhunted and stuff. Out in the woods, they’d have seven or eight fences up through the path. I wasn’t that keen on the foxhunting, but I loved jumping those fences. Sometimes we’d go back and forth a couple of times. I always wanted to be a jump rider.”

People describe Aitcheson as a gentleman. Growing up, “hell-raiser” would have been more like it. “My dad was brought up strict,” Aitcheson said. “I wasn’t that crazy about him. He worked me hard on the farm. My mother was my best pal. She was just a country girl from a big family—worked hard her whole life. I got in fights, got in trouble. She’d be real mad at me for a day or two, then she’d be my pal again. My dad said to someone, ‘Joe used to be a good boy, but I don’t know what happened to him in the Navy.’ But when I started riding races, I wasn’t running around carousing. I got along good with him then.”

After high school, Aitcheson served in the Navy for two years, and then applied for his amateur license at 19, riding a few overmatched timber horses at the My Lady’s Manor and Grand National meets and in the Maryland Hunt Cup.

When the Korean War started, Aitcheson wore the soles off his shoes getting to a recruitment office.

“I ran down there to join the Army,” Aitcheson recalled. “I passed the written test, and they said they had to wait about two weeks to get police records. I had a couple of minor arrests for street fights but I knew I was OK. I thought, ‘Hell, two weeks—I want to get over there and fight those Koreans.’ Right across the street was the Navy’s joining station. With the Army, I had to go to base camp training and then hope to get into jump school; it was going to take me several months before I got over there. So I asked the Navy how long it would take to get over to Korea. I joined the next day.”

Aitcheson’s job was gunner’s mate on the aircraft carrier Oriskany. He helped to move ammunition from below to the ship’s deck, where it would be loaded onto outgoing planes. This procedure was done in two shifts, for day and night raids.

“I didn’t hear them say ‘Clear the deck.’ A plane came in with a hung bomb,” Aitcheson said. “As soon as he landed, that bomb bounced off and came somersaulting up the deck and went off right about mid-ship, right about where the tower is. I was just below that. It shielded me from the stuff coming across. As soon as I heard the explosion, I knew it was a bomb. I figured we had been hit; I turned around and looked—it was right about where I had been. A big shower of shrapnel went up, about 12 feet from me.”
Four of his shipmates were killed, with another 30 injured.

In 1956, after four years in the Navy, Aitcheson returned home and wanted one thing: He applied for his professional steeplechase jockey’s license.

“It was as bad as my amateur year,” Aitcheson said. “I could only hustle 10 rides. Four of those 10 rides fell; they were rides nobody else wanted. I broke the same collarbone two different times. I ended up the year with my arm in a sling and no job.”

Well on his way to the Hall of Fame as a trainer, Mikey Smithwick turned Aitcheson’s life around by offering him a job as an exercise rider at his farm in Hydes, Md.
“Just by luck or help from the good Lord, I got a job with Mikey, just galloping horses,” Aitcheson said. “Every set, they’d take them out and pop over fences in the woods. They found out I could jump fences pretty good, so they made me second rider [named as a jockey when Mikey Smithwick’s brother, Hall of Fame rider Paddy Smithwick, was unavailable].”

The farm was overflowing with horses, including premier jumpers such as Neji and Ancestor, and later Bon Nouvel and Mako. Paddy Smithwick had been hard at it for about 10 years, having captured his first races-won title in 1950. It was perfect timing for Aitcheson.

“They had 30-some horses,” Aitcheson said. “Just riding the entries, I think I won 12 races. My dad had a one-horse stable. My sister Jane galloped it. When I wasn’t at Smithwick’s, I’d go over to my dad’s place and I broke it from bucking. My dad told Mr. [Alfred H.] Smith [the horse’s owner], ‘He’ll never make you a hunter because he’s spooky and he bucks a little, so let’s run him at the hunt meets.’ We ran him at the hunt meets one year, and the next year, he turned out to be a real top timber horse—Grand Chal. He even beat Paddy in the Virginia Gold Cup that year.”

Winners began pouring in for Aitcheson, who took his first title in 1961 and added two more in 1963 and 1964. Doug Small and Tommy Walsh upended his skein in 1965 and 1966, respectively, but Aitcheson was back on top from 1967 through 1970.

A bay gelding named Top Bid showed up at Smithwick’s farm in the winter of 1967- ’68. Formerly a workmate for the great Buckpasser, Top Bid won his hurdle debut under Aitcheson at Middleburg in 1968. From April to June, he won his first five starts and captured 12 races in all under Aitcheson. But it was on November 14, 1970, that Top Bid and Aitcheson secured their niche in the history of ’chasing.

In 1970, Marion duPont Scott unveiled the Colonial Cup, a $100,000 stakes that attracted international steeplechase horses. Top Bid, with Aitcheson aboard, rallied to win the first Colonial Cup, beating 21 rivals on his way to being voted the season’s champion jumper. On the same afternoon, Aitcheson guided Tus­calee, the 1966 steeplechase horse of the year—and trained by his father—to tie Elkridge’s record (31) for the most career steeplechase victories. Eventu­ally, Tuscalee (three times voted Maryland-bred steeplechaser of the year) would establish the current all-time record (37). Those two, Tuscalee and Top Bid, stand out among the greats ridden by Aitcheson.

“The most honest and most dependable was Tuscalee,” Aitcheson said. “The horse I won the most stakes races on was Top Bid; he was the fastest. He could motor but he had his heart broke by working with Buckpasser; if you could win on the bit, he’d win. If you couldn’t win on the bit, he wouldn’t try.”

Aitcheson rattles off old achievements and conjures up old memories with ease. It’s the day-to-day stuff that he’ll lose track of. But ask him about riding into a fence or about a certain horse, and it’s like you’re sitting in the jocks’ room at Rolling Rock again. A jar of wheat germ sits on the passenger’s seat of his car just as it did back in 1977, when he shared a room in my family’s house.

“I appreciate things now,” Aitcheson said. “I took things for granted before—like good health, riding races. Everybody knew you then, especially when you were winning races, going places with a good-looking gal. The notoriety of it was fun. I get a kick out of it now. I love to dance. Even now, when they have dances, I can’t find too many of these old ladies who can jitterbug with me.”

Nearly 30 years since he ruled the jocks’ room, Aitcheson is still a jockey at heart.
“I jog at least three-quarters of a mile every day down to the Giant food store,” Aitcheson said. “It gets me real exhausted; they say not to overdo it. I walk up six stories; I never use the elevator except for after dinner. I get exhausted and I never get any fitter. I get the health magazines; they say grape juice is good for you. Anything new that comes up, I eat it. I never eat meat—vegetables mostly, fish a lot, no beef. I like sweet things but I have to be careful. I weigh the same as I did in high school—142 pounds.”