ALONG FOR THE RIDE Ex-Jockey Mullins Enjoys Pace of Life as Exercise Rider at Hollywood Park

Mornings are always hectic in the stable area near Gate 7 at Hollywood Park. Before the sun rises, horses prance on the thick, damp soil, trainers have the day’s workouts posted and stable workers groom and feed the valuable animals.

The “backside” is a different world that comes to life at 5 a.m. and is closed to outsiders. It houses 2,008 racehorses and about 900 groomers who cater to the animals around the clock. There’s also a coin laundry, a cafeteria, a racing office where horses are checked in before competing and a small security building.

“It’s a world back there,” said Barkley Porter, a former trainer who works in the Hollywood Park public relations department. It is where the core of the race track action takes place, though the public may be unaware. It’s a racehorse lover’s paradise where horses are prepared for show time.

This is Jake Mullins’ world.

It is his hangout and, in essence, his life. The former jockey-turned-exercise-rider works for Gary Jones, one of the country’s most successful trainers.

Mullins works an average of eight horses five mornings a week before going on to his second job of colors man at the Inglewood race track. By 7 a.m Mullins, 37, has exercised half his horse load. He takes instructions from a sheet posted outside the Jones stable office which lists horses’ names and their track workouts for the day.

Mullins might gallop a horse, do a gate workout with another and sprint for time with another. The 5-foot-4, 120 pound rider says there’s nothing in the world he’d rather be doing.

“This is fun, it’s just so fun,” he said aboard Rich Pride, a 2-year-old filly. “I’m getting paid to ride some of the best horses in the world. It’s like getting paid to test-drive a Lamborghini.”

After practicing coming out of the gate with Rich Pride, his fourth workout of the day, Mullins went back to the stables and took King Turk, a colt, for a brief run. Clad in blue jeans, a colorful Hawaiian print shirt and a white skull cap, he concluded the morning workout with Lady Turk, a filly, Stalwars, a 5-year-old horse and Fair Seattle, a 2-year-old filly.

During a brief cigarette break he talked about his work in Jones’ small side office, which is decorated with plaques and photos of the trainer’s big victories and a large, white banner that reads: “Congratulations Gary Jones 1,000 Wins.” Happy Toss earned the 46-year-old trainer his 1,000th

career victory last year at Del Mar.

Jesus Mendoza, one of Jones’ assistant trainers, says exercise riders are a crucial part of a horse’s preparation. He says a knowledgeable exerciser like Mullins can make a big difference in a horse’s performance.

“Workouts are very important because that’s where horses get fit for the race,” said Mendoza, who has been in the business since 1969. “It’s like an athlete, if they don’t train properly they’re not fit.”

Jones says putting an exercise rider on a horse is like putting a jockey on a horse. You have to find the right one.

“The happier a horse is, the better it runs,” Jones said. “Jake rode for many years and he’s extremely professional and very dependable. He really understands horses and he’s very serious about his work. It’s difficult to find an exercise rider like Jake.”

Mullins likes exercising better than competing because he enjoys riding minus the pressure of racing. That’s why in 1980, after 12 years as a jockey, he hung up the silks.

“My dad was a rider and that’s what I always wanted to be,” Mullins said. “I lived in a northwest suburb of Chicago and I ran away from home at 14. I went to a farm in Texas to work with horses. I mean, heck, in first grade I wanted to be a jockey.”

In 12 years Mullins won 1,000 races in the Midwest circuit, which took him to Chicago, St. Louis, Kentucky and Arkansas. He says racing was fun, but he doesn’t miss it one bit.

“I just got burned out. I got so tired of reducing every single day,” he said. “I had to lose five or six pounds a day. I had to take all these water pills and I threw up everything I ate. I just got tired of all that crap.”

He also hated the weather in the Midwest circuit, which turned out to be the cause of many riding accidents throughout his career.

“There’s a lot of spills in the damp weather,” he said. “I broke my back a couple of times and my collarbone, my sternum and my wrist. I’ve also dislocated both shoulders and an arm.

“I mean, I used to ride in Chicago when it was 10 degrees and snowing. That’s tough on the body, you know.”

Ironically, his worst accident occurred two years ago during a morning workout at sunny Hollywood Park. Mullins was taking Fluke, a filly, on a six-furlong run and her leg snapped 70 yards from the wire. Mullins went down hard, breaking three ribs, his back and his sternum.

“But that was no big deal,” he said. “I’m more frightened driving home on the Harbor Freeway than on one of those animals.”

Mullins, who lives in Arcadia, is up every morning at 3:45. He works with horses from 6 to 10, exchanges his skull cap for blue New York Yankees headgear and moves on to the jockeys’ room till 5 p.m. for his job as colors man. His duty there is to make sure each jockey is wearing the silk representing the horse’s owner and trainer.

The silks, about 3,000 of them, hang in the rear of the jockeys’ room, where jockeys change clothes and hang out between races. It’s also where these athletes shed excess pounds between races by working out on various exercise machines or sitting in the sauna.

The colors room has an array of jackets and caps in every color.

Every day Mullins goes through the racing program to find the horses’ trainers, then puts the appropriate silk on each jockey’s hook. If an owner doesn’t have a color, Mullins gets the jockey the house silk for the day.

“When I first came in here it was very nerve-wracking,” Mullins said as he prepared to wash a load of silks used over the weekend. “Because, for example, one owner may have three or four different trainers but the silks are kept in one trainer’s name and then you can’t find them.”

It also gets confusing when a silk hasn’t been used for a long time or an owner changes trainers and the silk is under the old trainer’s name.

“Oh yeah,” Mullins said laughing. “A lot of owners have complained when their color gets screwed up. They let you have it.”

Mullins washes the silks after a race and puts them away. Now that he’s mastered it, he says the toughest part of being a colors man is sending the silks to the various race tracks.

After Tuesday, when Hollywood Park’s meeting concludes, he will accompany the thousands of colorful jackets south for the Del Mar season. Then he’ll go to Pomona for 18 days and Santa Anita for about six weeks before returning to Hollywood Park.

“We got to ship them in bags and set the whole room up there again,” he said. “That’s no fun.”

But he’ll make up for the hard work by having lots of fun on the backside--his hangout, he says, for the rest of his life.