At Fairplex Park, Jockeys Must Lean on Each Other to Survive : Horse racing: Bullring riding means close quarters and potential trouble.

Never mind the Kamikaze. Forget about the Zipper, the High Miler and the Wild River Flume. The wildest ride at the L.A. County Fair is a 1,100-foot strip of dark loam and sand, crammed full of snorting, free-wheeling horses who would just as soon bolt over the high fence and head for the sheep pavilion.

The five-eighths mile race track at Fairplex Park is a thrill-a-minute experience for the jockeys and horses who put on 13 shows a day, seven days a week for three weeks each September. This season has been no different.

Through the first 13 days of the 1992 season, which wraps up Monday, there has been the usual number of spills, injuries and close calls. Just like clockwork, the thoroughbreds, quarter horses and appaloosas have been blowing the tight turns, clipping heels, spooking from the claustrophobic confines of the little track, which is dwarfed by the larger ovals at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park.

“I’m amazed that there isn’t a major accident every day at a track this size,” said Steve Wood, the Fairplex Park track superintendent. “It’s a real tribute to these riders.”

Lured by total purses of more than $1 million, the West’s bravest riders grit their teeth and dive into the Fairplex meeting each year. For some, it is a calculated risk, for the stakes rewards are high. For others, it is a proving ground, a chance to ride for a top stable.

But for every jockey, riding at a “bullring” like Fairplex requires a heightened level of concentration. The game is tough enough at the full-sized tracks. Horses can be unpredictable and unsound anywhere. At a small track, their flaws are magnified.

“There is literally no time to think out there,” veteran rider Danny Sorenson said. “There is only time to react. If you find yourself thinking about making a move, it’s already too late.”

Of the 93 race tracks described in the American Racing Manual, 33 are seven furlongs or less. The majority of these small tracks are five-furlong ovals, with chutes extending off the straightaways to provide flexibility in presenting races of varying distances.

Besides Fairplex, the best known five-furlong courses are Sportsman’s Park in Cicero, Ill.; Timonium in Maryland, just north of Baltimore; and Stampede Park in Calgary, Canada. Los Alamitos is also a five-furlong oval, but it features quarter horses and standardbreds.

From 1933 through 1984, Fairplex was a half-mile track, with straightaways 60 feet wide, banked at two degrees, and turns 50 feet wide, banked at six degrees. It appeared as if the horses were always turning left.

For the 1985 meet, the track was expanded by one-sixteenth of a mile on each straightaway and widened to 75 feet. The straights were banked 3 1/4 degrees and the turns banked 6 1/2 degrees. Wood, a former rider, maintains the racing surface with an emphasis on safety and fairness.

“I try to eliminate any speed bias,” Wood said. “That way, the riders don’t feel like they have to go boiling for the lead all the time. They can be patient and be rewarded.”

Wood’s memories of riding the bullrings are still vivid.

“That was in places like Ferndale, up north, and in Arizona at Prescott Downs and Rillito,” he said. “We’d have so many guys go down that the stewards would ask us to stick around, even if we were through for the day. Sometimes they’d have to scratch horses because there was no one left to ride.”

The main danger at a small track comes on the turns--especially the clubhouse turn in races of six or 6 1/2 furlongs, when the horses have had the length of the first straightaway to generate speed.

“Most jockeys are just too hyper out there,” track announcer Trevor Denman said. “They get those horses out of the gate and running as fast as they can, and then they wonder why they can’t take the turn.

“I’ve seen guys come out of the gate actually whipping their horse that first furlong. That means the horse is running as fast as he possibly can. There’s no horse in the world who can corner properly running as fast as he can.”

Unless a horse has perfect balance, striding with his left foreleg first and reasonably clear of other horses, that first turn probably will be his undoing. The premium is on horsemanship and anticipation.

“Your horse can be taking the turn fine,” said Martin Pedroza, who is among the all-time Fairplex leaders. “Then the horse inside you blows the turn and takes you with him. The race is over.”

Because the riders are so interdependent on a small track, they keep a close book on each other and the opposing horses.

Pedroza goes through his Racing Form each day, circling in red the jockeys he does not want to be running behind or beside on those turns. Reigning Fairplex champion David Flores keeps mental notes on horses he has ridden that simply could not handle the turns.

“If they come up in a race against me, I stay away from them,” Flores said. “And sometimes, a sore horse is going to feel even sorer trying to make these turns. They can be trouble, too.”

There are a couple of basic tricks riders use to deal with a small track. They generally lower their inside stirrup a notch or two, thereby shifting more weight to the left to aid in cornering. They pay particular attention to the approach to turns, making sure that the horse changes lead legs on cue. And they try to be keenly aware of how much energy a horse has in reserve.

“You don’t ever want to be running up in between horses if you haven’t got the horse to hold your position,” Sorenson said. “I see . . . guys do it all the time. The next thing you know they’ve blown the turn because they’ve used their horse, or they’ve clipped heels sucking out of there.”

Ideally, a rider loves to be aboard a horse with tactical speed who can lay close, secure the rail, corner smoothly and accelerate late, when horses in front are beginning to tire and drift outward. Always, unless a jockey has much the best horse, patience is highly rewarded.

“Just look at the riders who have had the most success out there,” Denman said. “Before my time here Paco Mena was the kingpin, a very polished horseman. Then it was Corey Black’s turn, and he’s very relaxed. And now Flores, quiet and relaxed. Not at all a whoop-de-whoop jockey.”

Ultimately, Sorenson said, riding at a small track requires a healthy sense of perspective.

“It’s a fine line, riding safely and riding competitively,” he said. “But if you cross it here, you’re in trouble. And you can take a lot of other guys with you.”

Horse Racing Notes

Mama Simba, reigning queen of Fairplex with four stakes victories, heads the field Friday for the $100,000 Las Madrinas Handicap, a race she won last year. . . . The older horses won’t have two-time champion Elegant Bargain to deal with Sunday in the $150,000 Pomona Invitational Handicap. A winner of the race in 1990 and 1991, Elegant Bargain is recuperating from a hoof injury at the ranch of owner Lew Martinez in Morgan Hill. . . . Trainer Darrell Vienna reports that unbeaten Gilded Time, winner of the Arlington-Washington Futurity and Sapling Stakes, will make his next start in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. . . . Ralph Scurfield, on the California Horse Racing Board since January of 1991, has been elected CHRB chairman, succeeding Henry Chavez.