Trainer Discovers Pair of Winners : Mayberry Is Responsible for Solis and Soto Coming West

After “The French Connection” and “The French Connection II,” there is the Miami Connection, featuring an unlikely star, Brian Mayberry.

Actually, Mayberry has the early scenes, then he fades into the background, to the sounds of pounding hoofs carrying winning jockeys across the finish line. The real stars have been Alex Solis and Santiago Soto, and to a lesser extent, Carlos Marquez.

Solis, Soto and Marquez were riding at Miami tracks early last year, and since then Mayberry has separately suggested that they try the Southern California circuit, which is the most competitive in racing. Mayberry is no pied piper, merely a struggling trainer of claiming horses who worked in Florida before shifting his operation to California a year ago.

Mayberry thought that the three jockeys were good enough to win at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar, and convinced them to come West. The Miami Connection has brought these results:

--Solis, getting the mount on Snow Chief at Del Mar a year ago when four other jockeys weren’t available, has won the Preakness and the Florida, Santa Anita and Jersey derbies with the colt this year. In late July, the Daily Racing Form had Solis in sixth place nationally with purses of almost $4 million.

--Soto, since arriving in California three months ago, has won the Hollywood Invitational with Flying Pidgeon; gone to Canterbury Downs near Minneapolis to win the Canterbury Oaks with Puzzle Book, a California horse, and won two stakes at Del Mar--a division of the Osunitas Handicap with Flying Girl and the San Clemente with Our Sweet Sham.

--Marquez, at 44 the oldest of the riders to arrive at Mayberry RFD, suffered serious head and neck injuries in a spill in April, about two months after starting at Santa Anita. He is undergoing rehabilitation in Florida and hopes to return to California to ride.

Solis is 22, and Soto turned 34 on July 25, the day before he won part of the Osunitas with Flying Girl.

The label that trainers seem to hang on Soto is cool. Sal Gonzalez, who trains Puzzle Book, used that word to characterize Soto’s patient, come-from-behind ride at Canterbury. Mayberry also lists coolness--the ability to wait with a horse until it’s time to make a move--as one of Soto’s assets.

“Santiago is a high-quality rider,” Mayberry says. “I feel the same way about him that I felt about the other two who came out. As tough as it is riding against these top jockeys (Chris McCarron, Laffit Pincay, Gary Stevens, Bill Shoemaker, Pat Valenzuela and Eddie Delahoussaye are just some of them), there should always be room for one more, if he’s good enough.”

Soto gives the Del Mar jockeys’ room two Chilean riders, the other being Fernando Toro, who has more than 3,200 wins. Toro, 45, left Chile and came to the United States in 1966, five years before Soto rode his first winner just a couple of months short of his 17th birthday.

The leading Chilean jockey in the United States right now is Jose Santos, who at 25 is leading the New York tracks and ranks third nationally with $5.1 million in purses.

Soto has a 20-year-old brother who rides in Chile, but they do not come from a racing family.

“You know how it is when everybody says they want to be a doctor or a lawyer when they are young,” Soto said. “Well, I said then that I wanted to be a jockey.”

Experience is not easy to come by for aspiring riders in Chile. Before someone can become an apprentice jockey, he must work as a groom and he can have only two horses. Grooms there also gallop and work the horses, much of the time riding without saddles.

“By the time jockeys start riding in races back there, 90% of them are still pretty green,” Soto said.

Soto said he won more than 400 races in Chile and Ecuador, then 600 more in Mexico before he signed a contract to ride for Mayberry in Florida in 1980. Soto has won about 600 U.S. races. Mario Quinteros, a friend of Mayberry, had called the trainer from Mexico City and told him about Soto’s abilities. Quinteros is the only agent Soto has had in the United States.

“If you want to be on top, California is the place to be,” Soto said. “Out here, they have the best jockeys and the best horses. I thought this was the best time to come. Brian (Mayberry) has a large stable of horses out here.”

Soto’s first major win was the Hollywood Invitational, but in Florida he won a richer race--a division of last year’s $400,000 Florida Stallion Stakes. The winner, Scat Dancer, also finished third with Soto aboard in the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Stakes at Aqueduct last November.

Coolness might be Soto’s calling card, but in California the 5-2, 110-pound rider realizes that quickness counts.

“Jockeys out here send their horses most of the time, because speed is more important,” Soto said. “In Florida, you could drop your horse back nice and easy and then rely on a good finish. If you drop a horse far back here, like in 10th or 11th place, you’re going to finish 13th or 14th. The first week I was in California, I found myself trying to get horses to relax too much.”

Mayberry said that Soto has adjusted quickly. “The only thing that might hurt Santiago out here is that he’s quiet and not outgoing,” Mayberry said. “The established California jockeys not only can ride, but they also pick up mounts with their great personalities. But they might also get a little blase about it all, and that’s where Santiago has the one advantage: He’s eager to do well. Out here, you know you have to put out in order to stick around.”