As The New York Times revealed in an eye-opening investigation of thoroughbred racing locally and throughout the nation, horses are dropping dead on the track in appalling numbers. The Times inquiry sparked a state investigation of the industry in New York. The probe found evidence of the worst sort of greed and lax enforcement of safety regulations. Twenty-one horses died on the track at Aqueduct during last winter’s meet. Investigators concluded that 11 of those animals would not have died if the state properly regulated medication and if racing authorities did not allow less-than-stellar horses to compete for casino-inflated purses.

The New York Racing Association runs the tracks and oversees, if that’s the right word, the sport’s rules and regulations. But it has become clear that NYRA has been poorly managed and operated in the best interests of horse owners. Gov. Cuomo already has instituted a series of reforms aimed at toughening regulation, but the state report shows that even more aggressive action is needed.

Ironically, greater government oversight is required in part because of the growth of racetrack casinos, or racinos. The horse industry begged state officials to allow slots and table games at some racetracks to supplement purses and to get people to the track at a time of rapidly declining attendance. Revenue from the racinos has led to inflated purses, which has led to many of the abuses cited in the state report. Owners, trainers and others involved in the industry have added incentive to get horses on the track, regardless of their health or talent.

The result: carnage on tracks around the country. Horses that should not be running because of injury or because they’re simply not very fast have been marched out to the track and have broken down and died. Of course, horses aren’t the only species put in danger by greed and mismanagement. Jockeys put their lives on the line every time they get in the saddle—it’s remarkable that more of them haven’t been killed or seriously injured as a result of spills.

Government regulation is not always the best remedy for an industry in crisis. Indeed, it is often the worst remedy. But the sad condition of New York racing demands prompt and aggressive action from state officials.

There can be no more carnage on New York’s racetracks.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission held an emergency hearing today to in order to hear testimony from the public regarding the former Van Tassel and Kearney horse auction house at 126-128 East 13th Street.

A developer's dream.

Built in 1904, the building served as an auction house for well-heeled New Yorkers including the Belmont and Vanderbilt families to buy horses in the early 20th century. After the 20's, when cars replaced animals as the city's preferred mode of transportation, the building was turned into a machinery shop, and during World War II trained women in the industrial arts while the men were off in Europe fighting. Then, in 1978, artist Frank Stella housed his studio there, until the building was sold in 2005.

Representatives from various elected officials' offices came to voice concern over losing the building, including State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblywoman Deborah Glick and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Councilwoman Rosie Mendez pleaded for the building's landmarking in person. Other organizations with representatives that testified in favor of the landmarking included the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Municipal Arts Society, the Union Square Community Coalition, and the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America, along with several area residents.

The 11,777-square-foot building was sold in 2005 for $10 million, according to city records, with the owner listed as Isaac Mishan. At the L.P.C. hearing, when asked by The Real Estate, the alleged owner refused to identify himself, nor would he answer any questions. His attorney, in testimony to the L.P.C., said that the developer would prefer to work with the commission to find some sort of compromise, but if forced into a corner would consider seeking a hardship variance in order to demolish the extant building and build a seven-story condo building.

Johnathon Hayes, a 15-year area resident, told the L.P.C. at the meeting, "The space cries out for adaptive reuse .... We cannot live by luxury condominiums alone."

The L.P.C. tabled the matter as they have a 40-day stand-still agreement with the owner. It will be taken up again in the near future.

-Matthew Grace

Apparently Albany on Friday announced some $30 million in aid to the New York Racing Association, the private firm that runs the racetracks at Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga on a state franchise,to keep it from filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. From the AP:

See, the big plan to make New York's racetracks profitable was to institute video slot-machines at the tracks. Go to gamble on the horses, stay to press a button that's kind of like the arm of a one-armed Jack!

But that wasn't going to work if NYRA went under first.

Video slot-machines are controversial in other states, like Connecticut and New Jersey, where economic development has already been tied to gambling operations. Donald Trump was no friend to the idea of video slot-machines at the Meadowlands, for instance. Not really a problem here, it seems.

- Tom McGeveran

"It's a good place to live and it's a good place to hide," she said, as her Italian greyhound, Geist, sniffed me. She offered me a Tab and then poured me a glass of Veuve Cliquot. The door to her balcony overlooking 23rd Street let in a cool breeze.

"Are you going to come with me to the race track?" she said. "I might go Saturday, I'm definitely going Monday. It's going to be wonderful. The horse of the year for 2002, Azeri-a female, mind you-is going up against Pico Central. He's a really, really fast sprinter."

The night before, Ms. Adrien, 32, was managing the nightclub Marquee on Tenth Avenue. "I ran around and did what I had to do there, just did my job basically, dealing with promoters and D.J.'s and all that crap," she said. "At the end of the night there was a fight outside the club. At 5 or 6 in the morning, I bumped into Detective Strucker and his partner, they came rolling by in a taxicab-they were undercover or whatever-and they took me home, which was nice. They said, 'Our job used to be great, we're bored out of our minds. There's no shootings, no stabbings, there's nothing.' There's cops in New York who have nothing to do but take you home. They dropped me off, I went to bed, slept a couple hours, woke up too early. I went and got a Racing Form to see if there was anything juicy to play."

Ms. Adrien is 5-foot-2, skinny and unconventionally pretty, with plump Angelina Jolie lips and Pamela Anderson–size breasts. "It's a tough look to describe," said nightlife promoter Steve Lewis. "It's very Jessica Rabbit meets downtown chick …. Straight men are very intimidated by her and gay men are immediately attracted to her."

About a year ago, Ms. Adrien eased up on managing nightclubs; she'd had horse racing on her mind, so she took the train from Penn Station to Belmont.

"It was beautiful and I fell in love with the sport," she said. "I didn't play, I didn't wager for a good four months. I picked up just about every book I could on the subject and I'm still studying. I like vices. I just figured I might as well stay in vices. Nightclubs, race track, it's the same to me somehow."

She often comes home from the track with about $600 in her pocket. "Sometimes I make enough to pay my rent, and sometimes I'm a little ahead," she said. "I do it on a month-to-month thing. Last December and last February I got murdered .

"I feel comfortable at the track, it's full of misfits," she continued. "When I walk to the paddock, it's exciting. You're on the ground on the lawn as they come around the second turn of the back stretch, and you feel the ground go buh-boom-buh-boom , and these little guys flying by at 35 miles an hour and these beautiful, beautiful, expensive, sexy thoroughbreds-there's just something about it, it's very seductive."

I looked around her living room. It was filled with musty dead animals, including a raccoon, a deer head, a possum, a baboon, a black-bear head and a snow leopard. "He's endangered, falling apart, but he's one of my favorites, 'cause you know you're not supposed to have him," she said. "Sometimes I just like to look at them. Everything's from the flea market. I love animals, I love to look at them, dead or alive-whatever. They're beautiful. And I couldn't really afford to buy art. So taxidermy goes on the walls-why not?" In her bedroom she has a stuffed pheasant and a stuffed bat and bottles of Chanel No. 5 and Opium on her dresser. She said she rents her apartment out for photo shoots. "That's what I kind of do to pick up the slack on my income," she said.

Although she's managed some of the city's top nightclubs, she herself rarely goes out, doesn't dance and doesn't watch TV. She hates to make plans.

"It's kind of scary, because I don't know how I'm going to be feeling the next day," she said. "Who could figure that out? I'm happiest, I'm most secure when I'm here by myself. That's second to Belmont. I've heard that the race track is an escape, but I think it's all very real."

What makes her a recluse?

" People ," she whispered. "I like them, I do . But I just have a hard time socially, a little bit. It's not them, it's me . Sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I say things I don't mean, by mistake. I just don't like to have to be dealing with these things; I'd rather lead my happy-go-lucky life."

The next night we met at the Howard Johnson's in Times Square. She goes there at night to study the horses.

"I met a really great group of physicists here once," she said. "They were really nice and they were explaining to me singularities and black holes. It was really cool. There's cool people here, there's real people here-it's not like hanging out in a nightclub. It's kind of like being on the subway, only cleaner. You can get sherbet here, wonderful orange sherbet-and a parfait, those are really good, too."

She was wearing a white, flower-print dress, gold slippers and a long gold necklace. Her look, she said, was "à la Mrs. Roper from Three's Company . She had great style, so did Carol Burnett."

"I feel bad droning on about myself," she said. "I feel like a dick. I want to talk about horse racing . I'm worried about it. The average horse player is in his, like, 40's, 50's. You don't see any young people there-where's the next generation of wagerers and thoroughbred owners? It scares me."

She revealed a bit more about herself, reluctantly. She grew up in Orange County, Calif., and had a very unhappy childhood. Her mother did "nothing, ever"; her workaholic father had corporate jobs.

"I don't really know them very well," she said. "I heard that they recently divorced, but I don't know because I don't speak with them."

At 14 she started working as a restaurant hostess. "I was excited at the prospect of being a grown-up and getting out ," she said. "That's what got me through every day." She moved away from home in ninth grade and rented a room from a friend. But one day her parents seized her bank account; that night she left Orange County and hasn't talked to them since.

"I just don't really like them at all; I don't even want to talk about them," she said. "They're weenies."

Her grandparents were cool. "I'm worried that it skips a generation," she said. "I'm an O.K. kid. So if I had kids-would they be weenies, too? If I breed I've got to be real careful who I'm breeding with …. God forbid I had a weenie. But then my grandkids would be cool."

At 15 she was on her own in Los Angeles, on the Sunset Strip with under $200. She checked into a dive. "I'm a runaway, running low on money after a couple days, I'm homeless for a little while," she said. "That was fun. Sleeping outside, wherever, for a couple weeks. I'm thinking about things, I'm crying a lot, trying to get food. That's where my friend Ron came in."

Ron is porn star Ron Jeremy. They met at a nightclub; she didn't know who he was. Down to her last cent, she freaked out one night and called him. He gave her a room in his condo, said she could clean up there, and that she had to finish school.

"He is the nicest person," Venice said. "He is so caring. He has his degree in education and he used to teach handicapped, retarded kids. He's very patient and calm and nice and wonderful and funny."

She stayed with him until she was 17. Every day she'd sleep late, wait for "Dad" to come home, then go to parties with him.

"It was brother-sister, father-daughter, not romantic, not boyfriend-girlfriend, not lovers," she said. They ate crackers and cheese and the "picked-over porn grapes" left over from porn sets.

Being around the porn industry as a teen was "pretty eye-opening," she said. "When you're young, you think it's so glamorous and the women are so beautiful," she said. "I was really taken. I just thought that was it . I am lucky that Ron came around when he did because God only knows."

She said Mr. Jeremy still takes her to Disney World every year. Last time, he got recognized a lot because of his appearance in a 2003 WB reality show. Even preteen kids knew who he was.

"It wasn't just the parents this time," she said. "It's O.K., you know, he's a good guy. He's not out to poison anyone." She added that she doesn't watch her adoptive father's movies. "It's weird ."

At 17 she checked into the Chelsea Hotel. There, she met night-life promoter Steven Lewis, who was living in the penthouse. He hired her as a bartender at the Tunnel; she wore a tight T-shirt that read "44" (her chest size) and a pile of suits would gather around her. People would call up asking if "44" was working that night.

"She has an incredible look and incredible charisma," Mr. Lewis said. Throughout the 90's Mr. Lewis gave her jobs at Life, Spa, Plaid. "She's really tough," he said. "She's really good at dealing with police officers and problems and tough guys. In fact, the tougher the situation the better she is."

She worked for Mr. Lewis six, seven nights a week, until he had to go to jail for nine months in 2002 for his alleged involvement in narcotics trafficking at the Limelight nightclub. Ms. Adrien visited him once a week: After her Saturday shift ended at 6 a.m. at Plaid, a limousine would pick her up and take her into deep Pennsylvania. The first time she went to the minimum-security prison, they wouldn't let her in-she had no ID. But she had a photograph of herself from Playboy magazine (clothed, at a party with Hef) so the authorities made an exception.

Back in Manhattan she had a lot of free time she didn't know what to do with. Her grandfather, whom she never knew, once had a thoroughbred in California.

"He and my grandmother had their picture taken in the winner's circle in Holly Park, and I used to look at the picture and wonder what it was about," she said. "Somewhere, it was always in the back of my head."

We'd finished our chicken fingers at Howard Johnsons.

"They have a really good bar behind you," she said. "They know how to make Pink Squirrels and Grasshoppers, which you can't get at trendy places. You can order things like Golden Cadillacs. I'm not gonna drink a Cosmopolitan, I think it's kind of silly."

She said she's dating someone, but wasn't sure about the whole idea of marriage. "I have mixed feelings about longevity and commitment, things like that," she said. "It's real tricky. I don't know if I'll ever get married. A part of me really wants to, but I don't know if I'm really built to last. I have a theory: that I'm kind of a mistress, I'm not a wife, you know?"

She looked down and studied her Racing Form .

"You know, I'm still kind of green," she said. "Gee whiz. We have to find out if it's gonna rain cause the two big races tomorrow are both scheduled for the grass. Spice Island is running tomorrow. That's good."

I noted that she seemed to live pretty freely.

"I live in a hotel, I have no commitments," she said. "Do I have a lease? No. It feels fantastic. There's such luxury that goes along with freedom and I don't want to be trapped. I don't want to be put in a cage, who wants that ? I can get out tomorrow, I can get out tonight . And maybe one day I'll find a really lovely cage and I'll just settle in fine. Maybe I'll just disappear one day and go live in the hills of Austria and beekeep. I've been reading about it-I've got four books on beekeeping I found on the world-wide Internet."

"I'm winging it," she continued. "I've been winging it my whole life. Who knows, I could wind up old and decrepit and 70, chain-smoking and slinging drinks in Reno. I could and I may be happy! Face sagging and bright nails. It's O.K., as long as I'm happy. I probably shouldn't be. I should probably be pretty miserable. I mean, if you look at me on paper, I don't look so good."

She said she was going to Montauk in a few days-she'd check into a cheap hotel, feed the birds on the beach, wander around with her metal detector.

"I'll find a lot of pull tabs from sodas," she said. "I always think this is the summer I'm gonna get the real big score, like a big fat Rolex, I'll live on easy street for a while. There's no races on Tuesday, I have nothing better to do. Belmont's closed. Metal-detecting's good cause you can do it alone. It's a hobby you can have and it involves nobody else's schedule. You know what I mean? I've never scored. Best thing I ever found was a gold tooth."

She told me that she never plays a hunch.

"As a matter of fact, a lot of the time I don't play races where I'm too much of a fan," she said. "Here's one I used to do in the beginning: If I felt a horse owed me money because he lost the last time, I'd put money on him. That's ridiculous. If I'm a fan of a certain hero, a crown hero, then I try to stay away-because I think I have a tendency to put my money there because I want him to win so bad. It's silly, you know. I'm going to harden my heart soon, so it won't matter. But I guess I'm still such a huge, huge, huge fan. Who isn't, though?"

-George Gurley

If Mr. Chavez wins the Preakness on May 19, much of New York will be clapping and rooting for him when he comes back to Belmont with a shot to win the Triple Crown on June 9. If he loses, the bettors lining the rail or camped out in the shaded paddock will be calling him names–and not his racetrack nickname, "Chop Chop."

The racetrack population–from the white-haired day-trippers on the sun-baked benches near the finish line to the Jimmy the Greek types in the clubhouse lounge–say, This just might be the year . This could be the year that a jockey and a horse come to the post at the Belmont Stakes, the longest and final leg of the Triple Crown, to become not just winners, but legends. Horse-racing fans have been staking that prediction for the last 23 years. Not since Affirmed in 1978 has a horse won the back-to-back-to-back competitions. And without a bona fide equine hero, horse-racing mania among the general public has suffered.

But this might be the year. Monarchos, the horse swaddled in a blanket of red roses in Louisville on May 5, pounded into first with a time just shy of the great Secretariat's Kentucky Derby record. Secondly, Mr. Chavez–"George" or "Georgie" to his friends, "Chop Chop" to his fans for his adamant, masterly use of the whip–will be riding once more, and he may be the most underrated jockey in America. He was the leading rider in New York from 1994 to 1999, meaning he cranked more horses into first place than any other jockey. In 1999, he won the Eclipse Award, given to the jockey of the year.

This is a turning point for Mr. Chavez. For 15 years, he consistently won riding titles at most of the tracks he worked. But that was quantity, and in the stratified world of racing, what counts is getting on the finest thoroughbreds–the kind who win the big-money stakes races and qualify for the Triple Crown. Then a rider can earn millions more, a place in the history books, and fame that extends from the track all the way to the little girls who dream about horses and spend their Saturday afternoons cantering around stables.

Four years ago, Mr. Chavez began putting a plan in motion to reach the top. He replaced his longtime agent with a new one, ex-jockey Richard DePass, who set out to prove that Chop Chop had finesse. In 1999, Mr. Chavez broke through with two prestigious Breeder's Cup races, on Artax and Beautiful Pleasure. Then he set the Kentucky Derby as his next goal.

Earlier this year, Mr. Chavez discovered the horse that he believes is the greatest he ever rode. "Monarchos," he said. "That's my best horse."

Mr. Chavez has made miracles happen before–turning himself from a Peruvian street urchin into a multimillionaire. So if Monarchos has the power on May 19–if, as they say, Mr. Chavez "has horse"–then the jockey's will alone could push him across the finish line first. His fans believe he has such special gifts. At 8 years old, he was living in the streets of Lima on his own, earning 50 cents a day at a bakery. When he speaks now, he still gives off a flicker of wariness that illuminates the streetwise kid.

He started life in the house of his father and his father's girlfriend in the destitute nearby port of Callao, with a brood of older brothers and sisters who bullied him. "I was never part of a real family," he once said. "Since I was the smallest, I was beaten and denied food and clothing." He couldn't bear the cruelty and left home. No one ever came after him. He worked where he could, collecting bus fares, washing cars. When he couldn't find a friend to stay with at night, he would climb into the back seat of a car to sleep.

After a few years, he managed to locate his biological mother, whom he had never known, in a different section of Lima. By that point, she had 12 other children. He tried to join their lives, sleeping sometimes 20 to a room. When one of his half-sisters killed herself, the family seemed to take its sorrow out on him, the outsider, and he went back to the streets.

When Mr. Chavez was 20, a friend suggested that he try to be a jockey. He applied to the Hipodromo Monterico and got a job "hot-walking" horses after races and mucking the stalls. "The first time I was on top of a horse, you get this feeling like you can fly, like you're a bird," he said. "That was what I feel. I don't know if other people feel that. Sometimes you hear nothing, because you just think what are you going to do." Two years later, he got his riding license; inside of 12 months, he had become Peru's top jockey.

On a vacation to Florida in 1988, a friend suggested that he try riding at the local tracks. Mr. Chavez started winning, and the bigger money convinced him to stay in the United States. His reputation for roughness took shape from the beginning. That first year he received long suspensions, although one of the first violations was more comic than calculated. A trainer hired him to ride a horse and told him it couldn't be beaten. But at a crucial point in the race, Mr. Chavez dropped his whip. As he passed another jockey, he asked him, "Do you have any horse?" The friend said no and gave Mr. Chavez his whip. That infraction put him on dry ice for a month. "You have to go fishing," said Mr. Chavez.

Still, he won riding titles at the three major Florida tracks. He moved up to New York in search of better horses and, with his accomplishments down South to back him, picked up mounts from the start.

"Eddie Arcaro, they said he had a stopwatch in his head," said one Chavez fan, who wished to remain nameless, as he sat at a table of fat-cat gambling friends in the Garden Terrace Dining Room at Belmont, flashing manly jewelry. "Cordero rode the same way. Mr. Chavez has the same mentality. He knows exactly the time schedule."

"If you polled New York fans, I guarantee you he would win by 90 percent as the No. 1 rider," said H. James Bond, one of the first trainers to use Mr. Chavez regularly, and the one who put him on the great stakes-winner Behrens. "George is always trying. He's trying as hard for third as he will to win. That's his patented thing. A lot of riders that can't win just say, 'Well, another day.' George is always trying to get the best bang for your buck, whether it's a $14,000 claimer or a Grade 1 stakes horse. Everyone feels they have a great chance when George is up for their $2, and the owners and trainers feel the same way."

In a profession of small men and women, Mr. Chavez is extremely small–4 feet 10 inches and 108 pounds. But small and quiet do not add up to demure on the track. Immediately after the Derby, John Velazquez, the competing jockey who was riding Invisible Ink, asked officials to disqualify Mr. Chavez for cutting him off in the last stretch. But officials concurred that Mr. Chavez hadn't bumped Invisible Ink, just charged by him. (Only one Derby winner has ever been disqualified; Dancer's Image was bumped to second in 1968 after testing positive for butazolidin, a painkiller.)

"Jorge has been my No. 1 rider for many years," said Mr. Bond. "If you put him out there in the afternoon, he's just ferocious as a beast. He gets a lot of run out of a horse."

"He's solid as a brick," said Mike Marlow, who oversees Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas' stable at Belmont. "He's good at getting a horse away from the gate, and he helps them finish." Sometimes his aggressiveness can look harsh. "Oh, he can crucify a horse," said John Toscano, a Belmont trainer. "He's known for that. Some of the trainers don't like it."

John Ward, Monarchos' trainer, insists that what looks like a severe whipping style is an illusion. "He had a reputation for riding a horse hard, and that is in direct opposition to how my wife and I feel we want our horses ridden," said Mr. Ward. "We watched Jorge ride and we put him on a couple of horses and … he cruised around a lot, but he really doesn't hit a horse that hard. As a matter of fact, he's very light on a horse. So we started having success.

"Jorge, by being very short-legged, doesn't have the leverage and momentum that a tall rider does. A tall rider can really push on a horse and make the horse extend–follow through the way a diver does off a diving board. Jorge uses a very quick motion with his body and his hands to keep a horse in a good, long, full stride, and while he's doing it he's waving his whip, and the whip is coming very, very close to the animal, but he hardly ever touches the animal. He might brush it against him. But he doesn't just reach up and do the chop-chop."

By the end of last year, Mr. Chavez had earned a total of $103,144,082 for his owners, trainers, agent and himself. Still, he managed to keep friendly relations with the other jockeys. "A lot of these jocks can't speak English, so they just accumulate in the corner there until they get loose," said retired jockey Angel Cordero, who dominated the New York scene in the mid- to late 80's, when Mr. Chavez first arrived. "He was very quiet. He never complained. He was always a gentleman, and he showed me a lot of respect from the beginning, so you get to like people like that. We became good friends. We see each other six times a day all year round, from 6 o'clock to 12 o'clock–more than we see our families. You either like a person or you don't."

Mr. Chavez is quiet, by dint of personality and subtle language difficulties that haven't been negotiated even after 13 years in New York. After the Derby victory, said Monarchos' trainer John Ward, "We just kind of did a high-five. You can't understand Jorge too well when he's happy. I said, 'Is everything O.K., Jorge?' He said, 'O.K., O.K.'"

"Most people don't understand that you work for one trainer in the first race," said Mr. Bond, "and that horse maybe doesn't break well or gets shut out, and in the second race you have to go look Jim Bond in the face, and he's about to throw you up on a good horse …. You think about how a top rider like a Jorge Chavez rides seven or nine races a day and works for possibly five to seven different trainers a day, and still has to be emotionally that charged–it's really amazing. Jorge gives you a great sense of confidence when you walk into the paddock."

When Beautiful Pleasure, one of Mr. Ward's horses, was beaten in a stakes race with Mr. Chavez riding him, "Jorge was so emotional, he couldn't talk," said Mr. Ward, he was so upset "that his favorite horse got beat." Mr. Chavez told the trainer he had to go home to be with his wife, Margarita. "Some of the riders get off and say, 'Where did you get this bum?', and that really irritates you," said Mr. Ward. "But Jorge is an extremely genuine rider. If his horse is running last, Jorge is still back there trying to figure out some way to better them."

In the world of jockeys, there are a few standard horror stories: These athletes usually endure a cruel schedule of laxatives, marathon exercise sessions, fasts, hours in the 130-degree hotbox and induced vomiting, known as "flipping," to stay around the regular riding weight of 105 pounds. But with his height, Mr. Chavez makes just one sacrifice: He eats only one meal a day. Most jockeys are reglued versions of themselves, shattered from dozens of death-defying collisions. But Mr. Chavez has only sustained a broken collar bone and ankle. And many jockeys, having weathered horrifying physical ailments, turn to drugs or alcohol to soothe the pain. But Mr. Chavez appears to have avoided that problem. His self-discipline is so great that, during his youth, he actually went to college for a couple of years before dropping out; that means living on the streets of Lima from age 8, sleeping in the back of cars, he still forced himself to attend school regularly.

In the late 80's, Jorge Chavez met Margarita Chavez in Peru, when she came to interview him for an article. A year later, they ran into each other and became friends, but she was married to another man. But about 10 years ago, she surprised him by showing up one day at Belmont. She had gotten a divorce and moved to New York. They married and now share a large house in Franklin Square, Long Island, with their five children–two from her first marriage, one from his first, and twins who were born just 19 months ago.

Mr. Chavez cherishes that family, and they help make up for the deficits in his childhood. Six days after his Derby win, Mr. Chavez still was waiting to hear from the folks back home. "My father, he don't call me, but he will call me," he said. But his family "was very happy–they all call me and all come to my house. My friends … I tried to be close, but it don't work out, so I don't mind. It's my past. I don't want to talk about my past."

Mr. Chavez and his wife make large donations to an organization for homeless children in Peru. They fly down twice a year to make sure the money gets where it should. He also lavishly tips grooms and hot-walkers at the track. "The stable area, they love him," said Mr. Cordero. "Everybody is 'Chop Chop.' He's the Chop-Chop man. If he ran for President on the race track, he'd get a lot of votes."

But he's got a long road ahead of him before he can come back to Belmont on June 9 for that beautifully fickle brand of New York love.

"I believe in a little bit of everything," he said. "I believe in God. I believe in your talents. I believe in the horse and I believe in luck, too. Because … you can have the best horse and you get blocked, and something happens and you lose the race. Everything has to be working in the race. It's like a team. So you got to be everything perfect."

He has everything New Yorkers like in a hero–a relentlessly positive attitude, an intense work ethic, an underdog life story, an aversion to dredging up the past and a driving style that would incite the envy of any cabbie. Everything perfect.