On a sweltering August day, the Hall of Fame jockey comes in early, as usual. Twilight racing at Laurel Park doesn't start for another 90 minutes, and Edgar Prado is doing what the best at a trade do as their own competitive days dwindle: He teaches.
"You have to stay tight to the horse, like you're part of it," Prado said to Forrest Boyce, a regular on the Maryland circuit for several years, as she hunkers down on a rocking horse that is about a quarter the size of an actual thoroughbred. Like others here in the jockey room, Boyce knows to defer to experience. Boyce conforms her body to the faux horse, forming a seal around it. "Yeah, that's it," her mentor encourages.
"I teach them that instead of it being you and the horse that they have to be a unit, be one," Prado said.
