Rudy Turcotte

Rodolphe Leonide "Rudy" Turcotte (1950 – February 13, 2019) was a Canadian Thoroughbred racing jockey. He won the 1969 fall riding title at Aqueduct Racetrack as a 19-year-old apprentice and, during that meet, became one of the few riders then to win six races on a single New York card. He subsequently competed primarily on the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic circuits, where he was Laurel's leading jockey in 1971 and won a series of major stakes races during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Turcotte's most prominent victory came in the 1980 Grade I Laurel Futurity on Cure the Blues. He helped educate and regularly exercised the colt before riding him through an unbeaten five-race campaign in Maryland. Retrospective sources disagree on his final record: archived Daily Racing Form statistics credit 1,709 victories from 12,622 mounts, while a history of the Turcotte family by Curtis Stock reports 1,740 wins and US$11.6 million in mount earnings.

Turcotte was one of five brothers from New Brunswick who became professional jockeys. His older brother Ron Turcotte rode Secretariat to the 1973 Triple Crown and was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

Early life

Turcotte was born in 1950 and grew up in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, the son of Alfred Turcotte and Rose Devost. He was part of a large family in which five brothers—Ron, Noel, Rudy, Roger, and Yves—eventually became jockeys.

Ron helped Rudy develop as an apprentice. When both rode in New York, they reviewed patrol films together, with Ron offering criticism of his younger brother's rides. Film study remained part of Rudy's routine; The New Yorker noted his willingness to study the previous day's race films while praising both his strong finishing style and his recognition that he still had much to learn.

Riding career

Apprentice success in New York

Turcotte began his professional career in 1968. His first major breakthrough came during Aqueduct's 49-day autumn meet in 1969. Riding as a 19-year-old apprentice, he won 55 races from 326 mounts, more than any other rider at the meet, and was also the leading apprentice on the New York circuit. Ron finished second in the Aqueduct standings with 43 victories. Rudy's meet record also included 44 seconds and 34 thirds, and his season total on New York tracks reached 76 wins.

On December 2, 1969, Turcotte won six races from eight mounts at Aqueduct, sweeping the final four races on the program. His winners were Subtet, The Strumpet, Hickory Hollow, Luci Tee, Lucky Richard, and Awesome. It was the first six-win performance by a jockey at a New York track in five years and made Turcotte the fourth rider to accomplish the feat in New York since the introduction of pari-mutuel wagering there in 1940.

Mid-Atlantic circuit and stakes victories

Turcotte established himself on the Maryland and Pennsylvania circuits in the early 1970s. In 1971 he led the jockey standings at Laurel with 82 victories. The following year, he rode Angle Light to second place in the Garden State Stakes on November 18. Angle Light finished lengths behind stablemate Secretariat, who was ridden by Ron Turcotte.

His stakes record extended across several racing regions. Turcotte rode Three Martinis to win the 1970 Great American Stakes at Belmont Park. At Arlington Park in 1976, he won the Grade 3 Round Table Handicap on Effervescing and the Grade 2 American Derby Handicap on Fifth Marine. He later won the 1977 Princess Elizabeth Stakes at Woodbine Racetrack aboard L'Alezane, who was named that year's Canadian Horse of the Year. In 1979, Turcotte and Young Bob won the Hawthorne Gold Cup Handicap.

On May 3, 1978, Turcotte was involved in a four-rider chain-reaction spill at Pimlico Race Course. His mount, Easy Edith, broke a foreleg on the turn for home and fell. Turcotte sustained a broken collarbone; Roberto Pineda was killed, Jimmy Thornton suffered a broken neck, and Fred Kratz escaped serious injury. Turcotte made public comments expressing general concern about the use of the anti-inflammatory drug phenylbutazone, commonly called Butazolidin; a correction published by The Washington Post clarified that he had not specifically alleged that Easy Edith was overmedicated. In a 1981 profile by Andrew Beyer, Turcotte said that he believed the comments cost him mounts from trainers who favoured the medication. Beyer described the period after the accident as a three-year professional slump but did not attribute it to a single established cause.

Cure the Blues

Turcotte first rode Cure the Blues at Pimlico in April 1980. Although the inexperienced colt swerved and attempted to slow during the race, he won decisively. Trainer Bernie Bond then asked Turcotte to participate in the colt's education and to exercise him each morning. Turcotte subsequently walked and galloped Cure the Blues regularly. The horse won each of his first five Maryland starts by a combined 38 lengths, helping reverse the downturn in Turcotte's career.

The fifth victory came in the $159,360 Laurel Futurity on October 25, 1980. Cure the Blues drew the inside post on a sloppy track, and Bond instructed Turcotte to send him to the lead so that the colt could be moved away from the poorer footing along the rail. Cure the Blues led throughout and defeated Matching Gift by lengths, completing miles in 1:44. The race was then classified as Grade I, and the victory was the most prominent of Turcotte's career. Cure the Blues ended his two-year-old season unbeaten and was regarded as an early prospect for the 1981 Kentucky Derby.

Turcotte continued to exercise Cure the Blues after the colt was transferred from Bond to trainer LeRoy Jolley in Florida, although the change left his status as the horse's race rider uncertain. His later stakes wins included the 1982 Astoria Stakes at Belmont aboard Gala Jubilee.

Retirement and later life

According to archived Daily Racing Form statistics, Turcotte rode his final winner in 1983 and made his last race start in 1984. Retrospective accounts reported that difficulty maintaining racing weight and alcohol dependence contributed to the early end of his riding career.

After retiring as a jockey, Turcotte spent five years in Japan, where he broke young horses and taught riders how to gallop. He later continued working on racetrack backstretches in the United States as an exercise rider and pony rider. A 2006 Boston magazine profile found him working at Suffolk Downs, where the accumulated physical effects of racing limited him to exercising five or six horses a day.

Personal life and death

Turcotte was married to Janet Stacey, who predeceased him. They had two daughters, Stacey and Trudy; he also had a son, Rudy Homiak. Turcotte had four grandchildren. His son later recalled that other jockeys expanded Turcotte's initials, RLT, as "Rough, Little and Tough".

Turcotte died at his home in Grand Falls on February 13, 2019, at age 69. A Canadian Press account of Stock's family history reported that he died from pneumonia and kidney and liver failure.

Career statistics

Published retrospective totals differ. The figures below are kept separate because neither source explains the discrepancy.

Further reading

External links

• R. L. Turcotte at Equibase