What Michael Jordan was to basketball, what Wayne Gretzky did for hockey — Eddie Arcaro was all that and more for horse racing. “The Master” rode a record 17 Triple-Crown-winning horses during his 18-year career — five in the Kentucky Derby, a record six Preakness Stakes and six Belmont winners — and still remains the only one to have won two Triple Crown races with two different horses (Whirlaway and Citation.) And to think, if he had gotten discouraged by his first ever race, he would have never achieved any of that greatness.

On this day, May 18, in 1931, the fifteen-year old Eddie Arcaro rode in his very first horse race, at the old Bainbridge Park near Cleveland. Arcaro came in sixth that day, but kept on trying – and still not winning. He was still winless after 31 races at year’s end, but no less determined.

Two weeks into the new year, Arcaro finally won his first race, at Agua Caliente in Mexico. Arcaro quickly established himself as a top young jockey, and slowly began to rack up victories. In 1938 he won the Kentucky Derby, his first ever Triple Crown race victory, and three years later won the actual Triple Crown, setting records along the way.