By Kimberly Rinker

But for Eddie Arroyo, whose parents immigrated to the United States in 1950, it was the first step on a path that brought Illinois’ Senior State Steward and former jockey to where he is today.

Born in 1944 to Ernesto and Francis Arroyo, Eddie was the younger of the couple’s two children. His brother Ernie is three years older.

“Mom ran the community center in our town and Dad was the general manager of a coffee plantation,” Eddie recalled. “Where I grew up, horses were used to get places. There were mules and horses on the plantation and they were used to carry the coffee from the hills down to the processing plant. I wasn’t really around horses, but we did ride from time to time. If you needed to go somewhere you got on a horse and you went.”

Eddie said his parents decided to move to the United States for monetary reasons.

“I was six when we moved to America,” he remembered. “My parents came here because they were looking for better conditions for themselves and their children. We had relatives that had already migrated here and we followed them to Chicago.

“At the time, it was exciting for us kids, because we were getting on an airplane,” he added. “And we were excited at the thought of seeing snow.”

The Arroyos quickly assimilated into the American lifestyle, settling on the Windy City’s West Side.

“My parents both went to work for Sears,” Eddie explained. “They worked there until they retired.”

Eddie graduated from Austin High School, and was active throughout his teen years, participating in a wide variety of sports, including basketball and baseball.

“I acclimatized well,” he offered. “I really got into the sports programs at schools. But in high school I didn’t have a specific career in mind, but I did enjoy working with my hands. I worked part-time at a gas station, pumping gas and sweeping up, and I loved it.”

One day, during a break between classes at Chicago’s Loop College in the summer of 1965, a newsstand magazine caught Eddie’s eye.

“Everyone had always told me since I was small and a good athlete, that I should be a jockey, but I never seriously considered it.

“Then I saw this magazine,” he continued. “It was ‘Turf,’ and on the cover was a jockey standing there really cocky with a cigar in his mouth. The story talked about him and about how much money he was making and I thought to myself, that’s for me.”

The next day, Eddie found himself at the now defunct Sportsman’s Park stable gate.

“The first person I met was trainer Marion H. Van Berg,” Eddie said. “I told him I wanted to become a jockey and he told me to go to his barn and start walking hots, so I did.

“I liked it,” he continued. “I didn’t know anything about the industry or being around horses—especially thoroughbreds. I didn’t know the rules or etiquette associated with being around racehorses. After a while, I started grooming for Mr. Van Berg and eventually he started teaching me how to gallop horses.”

Eddie recalled his first time aboard a runner at the Cicero raceway.

“The first time they put me on a racehorse, someone ponied me,” he explained. “All I did was sit there and hang on. When we finished our gallop, I jumped off the horse, and I didn’t realize how tired my legs were, and I fell when I landed. I just sat there for about 20 minutes because my legs were like putty. And the pain for the next three or four days was just unbelievable.”

That first experience, however, didn’t deter Eddie from his objective—to become a jockey. He worked for Van Berg at the trainer’s farm in Columbus, Neb. in the spring of 1966 and at Arlington that summer.

“I galloped a lot of horses in Nebraska and here, and when Mr. Van Berg became the trainer of Calumet Farms later that season, I went to work for Henry Forrest,” Eddie noted. “I had my mind made up to become a rider and Calumet did not ride apprentices.

“Henry sent me to work for Willard Proctor at Hialeah,” he continued. “I really liked the moving around aspect of the racetrack, but it became scary because I was working and wasn’t at home with my folks anymore. I worked for Proctor for a short while and then met Kenny and Ann Heisey.”

The Heisey’s had a stable of 20 horses and were looking for a bug boy at the time. In those days, to become a jockey, a hopeful rider needed to secure a contract with a stable that sponsored apprentices.

“They developed jockeys in the past and were looking to develop another one,” Eddie confirmed. “The only way for an apprentice rider to get rides was to sign a contract. I was lucky I was with nice people.”

Eddie’s pari-mutuel debut came on Dec. 27, 1966 in a six-furlong race at Miami’s Tropical Park, aboard on a horse named Twisty Twtichet.

“I didn’t have a lot of equipment then,” Eddie recalled. “I had boots and pants and an old borrowed saddle and a helmet. The other jockeys and Jorge Velasquez—who was the leading rider in the country at the time—were all extremely kind to me. Velasquez told his valet, ‘give the kid whatever he needs of mine to use.’ His generosity meant a lot to me at the time, and we’re still friends to this day.

“Back then you had to be around 107 pounds or so to make the weight and I had a little trouble at times, but not as much as some riders. For that first ride, I weighed in three hours earlier than I should have and when the time came to race, I had lost about three pounds, all due to nerves.”

In January 1967 the races shifted to Tampa’s Sunshine Park.

“The horses there were younger and cheaper than at Tropical,” Eddie remembered. “One of them turned out to be a top Illinois-bred gelding—Lifelike—I got to ride him and despite my inexperience he won some stakes. He was the first good horse I got to ride, and there’s no telling what kind of horse he could have been. While I was riding him I got hurt and the next morning (Bill) Shoemaker was at the barn trying to get the mount. That’s what a nice horse he was. Lucky for me, Lifelike’s owner was very loyal and kept me riding him.

“The demeanor of the jocks room was very different at Sunshine than at Tropical though. The jocks were not as friendly as they had been at Tropical. There was never a problem, but they just weren’t as friendly. It was a cheap track and everyone was trying to grind out a living, and that made for a little bit tenser atmosphere.”

Eddie amassed his 40 winners and became a journeyman jockey after one year. Soon, he began riding for Stanley Rieser, who was conditioning some of the nation’s top fillies at the time, such as Belle Noire and Patty Canyon.

“Stanley was based at Churchill,” Eddie said. “He would race at Arlington in the summer and at Gulfstream in the winter. Back then, wherever the stable was going that I was riding for at the time, I went.”

Eddie piloted the 2-year-old filly Belle Noire to victory in the 1969 Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland in 1:27.20, then, a seven-furlong test.

“At the time it was a futurity and it listed the race as $25,000 added,” Eddie recalled. “I didn’t know anything about futurities at the time. I thought it was a $25,000 race and when I got my check for $13,000, I was astounded, as I was expecting $1,200. I was pretty broke at the time, and that was an awful lot of money for me then, so I called the track and found out that the check was correct! That was a real highlight early in my career.

“Stanley had some of the top Kentucky-bred mares and he had a ton of them at the same time. He was a nice person who loved the industry and loved the racetrack. Stanley loved the horses and the people and he was fun to be around, and he loved to compete. I never saw him down or unhappy, and even when we had bad days, his attitude was ‘tomorrow we’ll get ‘em.’”

Hasty Flyer was a strong colt Eddie steered to win the 1975 Washington Park Handicap for trainer Harry Trotsek and the Hasty House Farm. Time for the mile and one-eighth test was 1:48.60.

“Hasty Flyer was a very good horse, and was mean and cantankerous,” Eddie said. “But he and I got along well and we won a lot of races and some stakes together.

Harry Trotsek had an uncanny ability to bring out the best in each horse, Eddie stressed.

“Harry is in the Hall of Fame for winning a lot of races, but he should also be in there for being the most frugal trainer I ever met. Out of the 25 horses he had in the barn—23 were major stake winners. I rode for Harry in the ’70s, and he didn’t believe in a lot of medications or a lot of bandages on the horses or using Lasix unless it was absolutely necessary. Harry thought time was the best medication to give the animal, and when you have those kinds of horses winning those types of races, you can afford to give them a lot of time.”

Eddie peers during those years included Angel Cordero, Laffit Pincay, Eddie Belmonte, Steve Cauthen, Donnie Brumfield, and Willie Shoemaker.

“Those were guys I looked up to, that I would try to get hints from,” he said. “They were all aggressive riders who had the determination and drive to compete, but to me there was only one jockey that was above everyone else, and that was Shoemaker.

“What he could do on horses was beyond understanding,” he added. “No one could ever explain the knack that Shoemaker had. He was very small, even for a jockey, and didn’t possess the muscle strength that other riders had. He made you become a thinking rider, and he made the guys around him better riders.”

Eddie rode for 13 years, until 1978, when a mishap forced him to retire from riding.

“A horse fell with me after a race,” he explained. “I fractured my shoulder, my wrist and I did all kinds of damage to my right side. Then, I tried to come back too quickly and it just wasn’t working. I was riding for the IRB chairman at the time who had a nice stakes horse. We were talking and he asked if I had ever considered becoming a racing official.

“The thought had never entered my mind,” he continued. “But based on my riding career at the time, I decided to go for it.

“Any time you fall in a race and walk away you have a guardian angel on your shoulder,” Eddie stressed. “I had my spills and injuries, but never what I saw other fellows suffer and have to live their lives with. So I consider myself very fortunate.”

Eddie worked as an assistant to the stewards that first season and in 1980 became an associate steward. A year later he was made senior steward, a position he held until 1990.

“I was offered the job as assistant to the president of Arlington Park, and did that for five years,” he noted. “I felt I was getting a little stale and needed a challenge and there was a great opportunity to learn a different side of the industry. The education that I received was just incredible. To view racing as a business was to see a whole different side of the industry.”

From 1996 until 2001 Eddie served as the general manager at Sportsman’s Park, and when that historic track sadly closed, he returned to his role as senior state steward, a title he holds today.

“My management roles at Arlington and Sportsman’s gave me a completely different perspective of what the position of steward entails,” Eddie stressed. “As a steward, you’re supervising the industry, and I think it’s imperative that you understand the whole industry rather than just one part of it. Weighing out decisions such as scratching a horse or canceling a race, and understanding the repercussions of those decisions upon the entire industry is paramount to being a good steward. I don’t think most people appreciate what goes into making a decision with those kinds of effects. The integrity of the sport is ultimately most important and what a good steward must adhere to.”

For the past 37 years, Eddie has shared his life with his wife Sally (a one-time trainer), and their children Alison, 36, Sara, 31 and Rob, 25. He also has two children from a previous relationship, Ann, 41 and Arlene, 40. None are involved in the racing industry.

These days, Eddie spends his spare time on the golf course or with his family, and though he hung up his irons years ago, he said there is one horse he’ll never forget.

“Surprisingly, it’s an Illinois-bred filly whose name I can’t remember,” he laughed. “She was little and didn’t have a lot of talent but she knew what she wanted to do in a race and how to do it. You didn’t have to do anything with her. The first few times I rode her were difficult, because she was starting gate savvy and she would outbreak me. She would drag me along until I learned that she was on top of things, and no matter what I would do, she waited for a horse to challenge her, and would break into another gear. Even times when she was beat, she would give 100 percent. Of the nearly 10,000 horses I rode, she stood out.

“She was amazing in how smart she was,” Eddie concluded. She ended up winning some stakes only because of her drive and smarts and not because she was talented. Horses understand what they’re doing out there better than most people realize. She was one of the special ones.”

For all of those who know Eddie Arroyo, he’s a “special one” too!