HE’S DONE IT THE HARD WAY : Hart Takes a Very Long Road to Become Successful Jockey

Kenneth Hart--who pronounces it Kennth Hharrt --looked skyward and wondered exactly where the horse was going to land. Having just completed a flying frontal dismount, involuntarily, Hart found himself on the soft Los Alamitos Race Course dirt making some quick calculations in a game of inches in which he had a vested interest.

“I knew it was going to be close,” he said. “I didn’t know exactly where he’d end up, but I did know he was coming down real fast.”

The horse landed on top of Hart, which seriously hindered Hart’s chances of winning that particular quarter horse race last year. He ended up in the hospital for eight days with injuries he recites like a shopping list.

“A bunch of broken ribs a cracked shoulder, oh, and they had to take my spleen out.”

What he doesn’t remember is the name of the horse. You’d think something weighing 1,200 pounds would leave a permanent calling card on a guy’s memory bank. But horses have been good to Kennth Hharrt. He’s Los Alamitos’ leading stakes jockey (122 victories) and has earned a yearly salary of more than $200,000 for 15 years. Any inconvenience, such as the loss of an internal organ, is taken as the sport’s balancing act between gore and glory.

He might just get a little more glory tonight when he rides Florentine in the $50,000 Anne Burnett Handicap for fillies and mares 3 year olds and up. Trained by Russell Harris, Florentine is undefeated in three 1988 starts and has earned $1,006,852 in her career.

Hart started out on something a little less sophisticated as a boy herding cattle on a 30,000-acre ranch outside of Lubbock, Tex. He and his three brothers, Ronnie, Sidney and Jay, helped their father J.D. work a 648-acre chunk of the ranch. When they were in their early teens, they worked for $25 a day, which they saved as best they could to pay for rodeo equipment and entry fees.

“It’s all we thought about,” Hart said.

And like his present profession, it was tough. Cracked bones, bruised muscles, long trips over rocky roads in pickup trucks whose first design priority was not comfort.

“People talk about the pressure of riding in a stakes race,” he said. “That’s not pressure. Pressure is driving a 1,000 miles away to a rodeo and knowing you better do well or you won’t have enough money to make it back home.”

Oh, things got better. Hart made it to the national finals of the American Junior Rodeo Assn. When he was 13, a friend of the family, L.D. Jackson, asked Hart to ride a quarter horse in a match race. Hart’s horse won the race and Ken got $100. That was 1961.

“It was more money than I had ever seen in my life,” he said. “I started going to match races when I wasn’t rodeoing.”

Before he was 14 he had broken a hip, which required three pins to fix. By 1966, he was riding in Oklahoma fairs and in match races just about anywhere a quarter mile could be cleared. He rode at New Mexico’s Ruidoso track, and he rode on the bush tracks of Texas--makeshift courses that pop up in the Texan landscape. “They’re not big and fancy, but they’re flat and you can run on them, that’s all that matters,” said former jockey Bobby Adair, whose background mirrors Hart’s.

It was Adair who took Hart under his wing when the 21-year old Hart showed up at Los Alamitos--generally considered quarter horse racing’s No.1 track--in 1969.

“I was awfully lucky I met him,” Hart said. “He helped me a bunch. Bobby always tried to get me good horses, he was really on my side. That was pretty important since he was the No.1 guy at the time.”

Adair, born in Oklahoma, had come up much the same way as Hart. He had competed in rodeos and hustled for races from Washington to South Dakota to Arizona. He knew the type of life Hart had led and what it does to man’s spirit.

“You either get tough or you die,” Adair said.

Broken ankles, broken wrists, broken shin bones, collar bones and shoulder blades. He has had teeth knocked out and been knocked unconscious.

Tough?

After the aforementioned flying horse incident, doctors said he would be out of racing for at least eight months. Thirty days later he rode Florentine to victory in the Rainbow Stakes at Ruidoso.

Tough, you bet. Smart?

“When you get to a point of success you have a lot of responsibilities,” he said. “I’ve reached a point in my life where people depend on me at certain times. I don’t want to let them down. I don’t want to let myself down.”

Hart was also lucky to have a long and fruitful relationship with Blane Schvaneveldt, Los Alamitos’ all-time leading trainer, who guided more than a few stakes winners Hart’s way.

“You don’t win races on your own,” Hart said. “There have been a lot of people who’ve helped me.”

Though, at age 40, Hart is now helping himself to a little free time.

“No more eight and nine races,” he said. “Now I’ll go three or four. I’d rather compete in the big races.”

Which means that a few million dollars removed from mending fence outside of Lubbock, Kennth Hharrt hasn’t changed a bit. To get the big races he crisscrosses the country. There’s no more pickup trucks, usually it’s some private plane sent by some wealthy owner. He has flown in especially to ride and win. Of course, what’s usually waiting for him after the plane ride is a horse very capable of winning.

“People don’t fly you down and pay all of your expenses so you can ride a dink.”