Triple Crown-winning jockey Victor Espinoza is 43, but Steve Cauthen was barely older than three-year-old Affirmed when he rode that horse to the same glory in 1978. The opening of Nellie Blagden’s People profile of Cauthen at 16, the year before his career highlight:

The first-class cabin of the California-bound jet carried handsome British actor Michael York and rugged William Shatner, Star Trek’s Captain Kirk. But when the stewardess working the section got her first free minutes, she perched next to a wispy 16-year-old boy, smiled ingratiatingly and started to chat.

Jockey Steve Cauthen is getting used to that kind of attention. Since he started dominating the horse-racing world a couple of months ago, Steve’s feats have been chronicled in minute detail by television and newspapers, admiring letters pour in daily, fans dog him for autographs and bettors for tips. Even the astute Swifty Lazar, a literary agent whose stable already includes such noted front-runners as Richard M. Nixon, tried to sign adolescent Steve for a book on his life.

Cauthen’s accomplishments would be considered extraordinary if he were a veteran jockey. In fact, he is an apprentice who has been riding less than a year. In one dizzying recent stretch at Aqueduct in New York, Cauthen booted home six winners in one day, 23 in six days, 110 in 46 days. At his current pace, he could wind up with 740 winners for his first year, 194 more than any rider ever has compiled.

Since last May Steve’s mounts have won an unprecedented $2.6 million, and Cauthen kept about $260,000 of that booty for himself. In spite of his success—he currently earns about $20,000 a week—Steve conducts himself like a shy, level-headed 16-year-old with more than one kind of horse sense. “I don’t think I am a superstar,” he says. “My parents warned me not to be a big head, so I watch myself.”

His only extravagances so far have been a blazing red Mercury Cougar and two tickets to A Chorus Line, a musical he went to see with his mother, Myra. And despite a schedule that has included six nine-race days a week at Aqueduct and a Saturday flight to California to race at Santa Anita on Sunday, Steve has kept up his correspondence courses “because I promised my dad I would finish high school.”•