Sometimes amid the glitzed-up chaos that is American sports, good stories go unnoticed. So suddenly this weekend the name of Laffit Pincay is everywhere. Hang around long enough and anybody can be an overnight success.

Last Monday not many Americans could have picked Laffit Pincay out of a police line-up if it meant saving their lives. This weekend he is a full-blown celebrity. Everyone loves Laffit. At last.

He rode Irish Nip to victory in the sunshine and dust of Hollywood Park last Friday and the ticker tape began sputtering in earnest. Pincay's 8,834th career win makes him the greatest American jockey ever. Or as the Americans say, the winningest jockey ever. On the back of Irish Nip, Pincay surpassed the old record of the legendary Bill Shoemaker who was there in his wheelchair to watch and cheer.

The win on Irish Nip came with a little preemptive drumroll. Pincay had equalled Shoemaker's record the day before. On Friday the queue of people looking to have a souvenir betting slip from Pincay's record-breaking ride brought the price on Irish Nip down to 2 to 1 from 6 to 1.

Pincay's achievement comes just in time for him to make his way on to the lists of the great athletes of the century but, gracious as Shoemaker was with his praise this weekend, it is he who still grips the imagination.

Shoemaker was lucky. His 42-year career spanned an era when horse racing had a firm grip on the American imagination. Shoemaker rode in a time before television began determining what sports people would find sexy. He was the Michael Jordan of his time.

Today you could flick your remote control for a year and never see a horse race on American TV. People think the game stopped when Shoemaker retired.

It didn't. The careers of Shoemaker and Pincay overlapped for long enough for each man to be the other's idol. Pincay speaks of his wonder at how Shoemaker could persuade a horse to do anything.

Shoemaker calls Pincay the best person he has ever known. Pity that the glory can't be shared just as generously. The life they have both lived is so tough that the limelight should be spread around a little more.

What is it about jockeys which make them so different from run-of-the-mill sports stars. Perhaps it's the enforced humility.

Being a Tony McCoy or a Laffit Pincay involves losing several times every day, it means being a careless moment away from feeling over 1,000 lbs of thundering hooves on your head, it means sitting down every day in the same weighroom as all your rivals and it means that never-ending treadmill of self discipline.

What a breed they are. When did you last hear of a row in a nightclub involving jockeys out on the razz? Anyone remember a jockey declining to work because he wasn't getting enough respect or moolah or a big enough dressing-room?

They are fascinating, admirable professionals, unique in the world of sport. They stomach the stifling stuffiness of turf clubs and jockey clubs, they doff the hats to owners no matter how boorish or charmless they may be and they live their lives as a rolling caravan of confederates. A hard, hard life where you get abused by bozos ripping up losing betting slips, where you seldom get the credit for finding the gap or calming the nag.

Pincay is no different. What made his milestone achievement so popular among his friends in the weigh-room on Friday was his exemplary ordinariness. He has a wife and three kids and a seven-days-a-week work habit. He's 52 years old and 113 lbs.

Pincay has come the long way and the hard way. This has been a 35-year journey involving 44,647 races. Imagine. 44,647. How many of us will do anything that many times.

He won his first race in May 1964 at the Presidente Ramon track in Panama City. He had started riding as a kid in his native Panama. He had the bloodlines, being the son of a famous south American jockey, and he served a sparkling apprenticeship juddering around crazy hard tracks atop lazy bone-breakers who needed considerable persuasion to get interested in racing.

By the end of his 17th year he was on his way to the United States having being spotted by a millionaire owner called Fred Hooper. He arrived with $40 in his pocket and not a word of English. He signed to a $500-a-month contract and never looked back. His language school was television, and his earliest phrases came straight from the celebrity gameshow Hollywood Squares.

His early experiences on the tracks of Panama and California have shaped his career and probably kept him from getting the record sooner. The California circuit is fast and the tracks are hard and the riding skills involved are different from elsewhere.

Pincay has stuck to California for most of his career, contenting himself with being a hardworking, day in day out jockey.

The eastern circuit has different demands and different traditions and although Pincay won the Kentucky Derby once and has competed well in places like Belmont Park and Aqueduct he has generally been restricted in his choice of horses when he goes east. Californian jockeys are given Californian horses. Often the handicap is too great to overcome.

He gained his reputation early on with a furious riding style which saw him bully his way through the slightest gaps the field had to offer. It was said of him that he asked so much of a horse and of himself that his fellow riders expected to see him carry a nag on his shoulders past the post some day.

Perhaps then Pincay's race on Thursday last which equalled Shoemaker's record is the one that best typifies his style.

He squeezed a win from I Be Casual, a nag which had never threatened a win before. The horse was trained by a trainer who had lost 42 of his previous 44 races. Typical good guy. Laffit was riding for a favour.

For a telesecond the guy had his Warhol allotment of fame. Then it was back to business as usual. Sulking hoopsters, arrested gridiron players and the theatre of the World Wrestling Federation.