SAN GABRIEL VALLEY / COVER STORY : On THE Fast Track : Corey Nakatani, a native of Covina, has quickly become the hottest jockey at nearby Santa Anita.

The rain came down in sheets that day, turning the normally manicured Santa Anita Park racetrack into a muddy swamp. Partway into the day, Corey Nakatani, horse racing’s hottest jockey, had come in third in one race and had lost badly in two others.

Pacing in front of one of the mounted closed-circuit televisions replaying the race, Nakatani brought his riding crop down hard on the back of a leather chair. Whap! Other jockeys watching television in the Jockey Room turned their heads to see what the commotion was all about.

“I’m staying clean, but I’m not winning,” Nakatani yelled, noticing, as if for the first time, his drenched but unsullied racing silks.

The scene was nothing new to other jockeys. Some remember a few years back when Nakatani was frequently unable to contain his anger and disappointment after a loss. And Nakatani now admits sheepishly that it wasn’t unusual for him to get into post-race fistfights or challenge other jockeys to meet in the parking lot after work to settle on-track differences.

These days, however, it’s rare to see the 24-year-old Covina native blow up. For the most part, Nakatani has checked his once-hot temper and replaced it with a cool on-track confidence that has catapulted him to the top of one of the toughest colonies of riders in the nation.

In 1989, the teen-age Nakatani led all Southern California apprentice riders in prize money, with $2.5 million. In following years, upon graduating to full jockey status, he rode in the Kentucky Derby--although not in the money--came within a neck of winning the prestigious Breeder’s Cup and, in 1994, took the Del Mar title for most wins of the season, 51. That same year, Nakatani also won the Oak Tree title for the most wins in the Oak Tree Stakes at Santa Anita.

Despite an eight-week layoff to recover from a broken ankle and a handful of five-day suspensions for racing infractions, Nakatani still managed to pull down $9.4 million in winnings last year, grossing approximately $800,000 in earnings.

By the end of this January, Nakatani had won $1 million in prize money, making him the most successful jockey in the country so far this year.

Nakatani is notable for more than his rapid rise to the top of the racing world. He is the only Japanese American riding professionally in Southern California. He is also the only home-grown jockey racing at Santa Anita. But it is the bittersweet irony that the track itself holds for Nakatani and his family that truly sets him apart from the other jockeys.

At the start of World War II, Nakatani’s grandparents were detained at a holding station set up at the Santa Anita racetrack before being shipped off to a Denver internment camp for Japanese Americans. Nakatani’s father, Roy, a Vietnam veteran and a 20-year employee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was born in the camp.

Nakatani and his family don’t talk about the internment much. A great deal of the family’s identification with its Japanese heritage was wiped away as a result of the political imprisonment of his grandparents and their children.

Immediately after the war, Nakatani’s grandparents (his grandfather, Willie Nakatani of Azusa, died in December) would not allow their children to talk about “the incarceration,” as Roy Nakatani calls it. They also would not allow their 12 children to speak Japanese.

Corey Nakatani is himself one of 10 children; neither he nor any of his siblings ever learned to speak Japanese. Of his Japanese ancestors--his mother is of Danish and Irish extraction--only his grandmother, Shizuko, is able to speak the language, though she rarely does, family members said.

Nakatani recalled traveling to Japan with his father recently to compete in a race. Neither could communicate with their hosts.

“It’s weird how things happen,” Nakatani said. “My grandparents had everything taken away from them.”

Now he’s physically in the same spot where their problems began, he said. “Every time I go out there and win, I like to think they are proud of me.”

But the family link to Santa Anita played no direct role in ushering Nakatani into the world of professional horse racing. The vehicle of fate that literally drove Nakatani to the track came in the form of an MTA bus.

Santa Anita Park was part of bus driver Roy Nakatani’s route when Corey was a youngster. With Corey and other children from the close-knit family in tow, as they often were, Roy Nakatani would periodically stop for breaks. When he wasn’t having the youngsters scramble for coins that he’d throw in the back of the bus when it was empty, Roy Nakatani would take his breaks at places like parks, or the beach or at the track.

When Corey was 14, at the end of his sophomore year at Northview High School in Covina, his father sat him down at the dining room table one night after dinner and asked Corey what he wanted to do with his life. Corey, who had always been more athletic than his siblings, said he wanted to race horses.

His answer was not as unusual as it might seem. As a small boy Nakatani and his brothers and sisters would regularly visit their uncle’s ranch in Placerville and ride horses. Corey loved being strapped to the back of the horses, his mother said.

Also, his small frame (he is 5-feet, 1-inch tall and weighs 110 pounds) made horse racing a natural career selection. He stands shoulder to shoulder with some of his five sisters, but he’s a full eight inches shorter than his brother, Shawn. Still, it was Corey who seemed to have the competitive drive. It was Corey who assumed team leadership duties when it came to playing sports in front of the family’s Duxford Avenue home.

“He’s always been an overachiever. He always had a natural drive in sports to be No. 1. That’s him in a nutshell,” said Nakatani’s father. “He hates to lose. I’m that way too.”

The day after their father-son talk, Roy Nakatani went back to the track and talked with some of the trainers with whom he had become friendly. Corey could get a shot at riding, but only after he had some formal training, they said. Even then, there were no guarantees. The teen-ager would have to pay his dues, cleaning stalls, walking hot horses and picking up rides where he could.

A few months later, the Nakatanis borrowed $5,000 from a bank and enrolled their son in a jockey school in Castaic, at first just on weekends, then for five days a week. Nakatani quit Northview High before his junior year and received his general equivalency diploma two years later.

“We were always behind him,” said Marie Nakatani, recalling all the seemingly endless trips to and from jockey school in Castaic.

“To get Corey’s career going we had to sacrifice too,” said his father.

“It wasn’t a sacrifice,” Marie Nakatani shot back. “We enjoyed watching him.”

When Corey Nakatani was younger, he took it as a personal affront when he didn’t win, said his wife, Michelle, 27, a horse trainer. She remembers the time two years ago when he broke his hand on the face of another jockey in a post-race fistfight at Los Alamitos Racetrack. Nearly all the jockeys at Santa Anita have had their share of run-ins with her once-fiery husband, Michelle Nakatani said.

“He just wanted to win every race,” Michelle Nakatani said in an interview at the couple’s home in Monrovia, where they live with their three children, Brittany, 4; Matthew, 2, and Austin, 8 months.

“He’s just very tenacious,” said longtime trainer Wally Dollase of Pasadena, Michelle Nakatani’s father. Dollase first met the young jockey when Nakatani was riding as an apprentice in 1989 at Del Mar.

“Whether it’s horse racing or golf or Ping-Pong,” Nakatani doesn’t take losing easily, Dollase said.

By his own admission, Nakatani said that his drive to win--and willingness to duke it out with any rider who crossed him during the heat of competition--didn’t help him win any popularity contests among Santa Anita’s stable of jockeys.

“Just ask anyone, ask any of the trainers around here, and they will tell you what a hardhead I was. To be honest with you, a lot of my teachers in high school never thought I would go as far as I have. I wasn’t an average student. I was a below average student,” he said.

Today, with the guidance of older riders such as Laffit Pincay Jr., Nakatani has cooled his act and learned to bring a measure of grace to his losses.

Among sports aficionados, Nakatani is seen as a younger version of Pincay, a rider who becomes one with his horse, directing and driving it rather than using the crop, and who takes his cues from the horse’s natural instincts.

A combination of talents go into making a great jockey, said syndicated handicapper Jack Karlik. “He’s an even-tempered kid. That’s one of them,” Karlik said.

Nakatani said he has Pincay to thank for that. It was Pincay who two years ago took Nakatani under his wing and taught him how to win and lose with grace.

The 48-year-old Pincay, who has been racing for 30 years and holds nearly every major racing record, said there have been many young riders over the years who never accepted his advice and, consequently, didn’t last.

But Nakatani, Pincay said, will be around awhile, primarily because of his ability to adapt and improve.

“What impresses me most about Corey is his willingness to learn,” said Pincay, recalling the post-race talks with Nakatani encouraging the young rider to keep his cool and take tough losses in stride. “You can give advice to some guys and it’s in one ear and out the other. But Corey really listens.”

Partly to stay in shape, partly to relax, Nakatani has taken up playing golf in his time away from the track, even playing in charity tournaments when he can. He also maintains close ties to his family, visiting his nephew, Chris, in the hospital every night after the races. The teen-ager is at City of Hope in Duarte battling lymphoma, a form of cancer.

“I think the thing that’s changed a lot for me from last year to this year is my confidence and knowing that you can’t win every race,” Nakatani said. “When I started out, I was real arrogant. But I want people to know that that’s not the real Corey. The real Corey cares about people.”

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Getting a Leg Up

Highlights of Corey Nakatani’s racing career:

1989: Led all apprentice riders in Southern California, winning $2.5 million in prize money.

1990: Won the Bay Meadows Derby aboard Itsallgreektome.

1991: Won the $250,000 Wells Fargo California Cup Classic.

1993: Won the Strub Stakes at Santa Anita riding Siberian Summer.

1993: Won the Del Mar Budweiser Breeder’s Cup.

1994: Won the Del Mar title with 51 victories.

1994: Won the Oak Tree title.

1994: Rode Dramatic Gold to victory in the $1-million Molson Export Million Stakes.

1995: Currently leading the jockey standings at Santa Anita.