Derby win is a family affair
By ROB LONGLEY -- Toronto Sun
If Stewart Elliott had listened to his mom, Myhill, when he was 12, he wouldn't be a Kentucky Derby winner today.
Even though racing had been in her blood for generations dating back to her Scottish roots, Myhill dreamed of a better life for her boy.
VICTORY
It can't get much better than it is now, however. Not after Saturday, when the 39-year-old man she still calls "my baby" brilliantly rode Smarty Jones to victory in the 130th Derby at Louisville's famed Churchill Downs.
Not when he will head to Baltimore in 12 days for the Preakness Stakes to try to capture the second jewel of racing's Triple Crown.
Life at the racetrack isn't always a blanket of roses, as both Myhill and Toronto-born Stewart know first-hand.
Her husband, Dennis, was a jockey at Woodbine when Stewart was born. Myhill herself is the daughter of a horseman in her native Scotland and still trains a small string at the Rexdale track with her brother, Bill Stewart.
But a mother knows best and one of the last things Myhill wanted to see was her son become a rider.
"I come from a family that has been in racing for generations," said Myhill, who was in Louisville to watch her son's magical win. "I wanted him to be a vet. But at 12, he decided this is what he wanted to do ... there was no stopping him."
After Saturday's storybook victory with Smarty Jones, a lifetime of more lows than highs paid off handsomely.
With the $5-million US bonus the owners collected for winning two Arkansas-based prep races plus the Derby, Elliott's share was more than $500,000 US.
No one can deny he didn't pay his dues to get there. Other than a few natural lightweights, most jockey colonies are rife with riders who spend hours in the sauna sweating off pounds or filling toilet bowls with vomit to make race weight. Neither Stew nor his father, Dennis -- who now lives in Florida -- were lucky enough to be naturals and have suffered accordingly.
"I watched his father diet -- he rode for 23 years in nine different countries," Myhill said. "Dennis had to work hard to reduce. It's a tough life.
"I figured (Stewart) would be better off being a vet. He'd make good money and still be in the horse business."
The advice fell on deaf ears.
Like father, like son, he became a rider, beginning when his mom would put him aboard a horse at Woodbine.
When they moved to Hong Kong to follow Dennis' career, it was in Stew's blood.
The son got his jockey's licence as a 16-year-old and has been riding ever since. For 23 years he has toiled at mostly lesser-known tracks, grinding out more than 3,200 wins on the backs of mostly nondescript horses.
There were hard times and moments of self-doubt. In fact, Elliott almost quit riding after an accident in the mid-1980s and his weight ballooned.
"I was miserable every day, I couldn't control it," he said of his nearly two years spent on the sidelines. "I was lost. But I didn't know anything else, so I had to get back."
Saturday, he ascended to a rare spot at the top of his sport staying ice-in-his-veins cool in his first Derby mount. He hustled Smarty Jones out early, stalked leader Lion Heart and patiently waited for the right time to pull the trigger.
"With all he had at stake it would be enough to make a lot of people crush under the pressure," two-time Derby winning jock Chris McCarron said yesterday.
"It would have been easy to lose focus. But he didn't do that. It was a very impressive performance."
IMPRESSED
No one was more impressed than his mother. All week she had been getting good-luck wishes from fellow horsemen on the Woodbine backstetch.
Little people like Stewart and Myhill, who were vicariously sharing a slice of a Derby dream that somehow bucked the odds and came true.
