The Nakatani Formula : Jockey’s Impressive Winning Year Comes as He Grinds It Out by Riding a Lot and Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

When you look at jockey Corey Nakatani’s impressive statistics for 1995, you wonder if there’s a typographical error, or if a gremlin is hiding in the computer.

Here is Nakatani, less than three weeks from the finish, running a very respectable third, behind Jerry Bailey and Gary Stevens, in the battle for the national money title, based on earnings that jockeys’ horses have accrued. Nakatani’s horses have earned a little more than $14 million, which puts him $2.1 million behind Bailey and less than $100,000 behind Stevens. Bailey, with $16.1 million, has broken the record of $15.9 million that Mike Smith set last year. Nakatani has run out of time, but what’s noteworthy is that he has been in the race at all and actually led Bailey and Stevens going into Breeders’ Cup Day on Oct. 28.

He has ridden no horse faintly comparable to Cigar, who has been Bailey’s bell cow with $4.8 million in purses; and he has not had the big-race success of Stevens, who began the year with victories in the Santa Anita Handicap and the Santa Anita Derby, and has kept going with victories in the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont and the Travers, besides picking up about $1 million during a stay in Hong Kong.

Nakatani’s best horse this year has been Sandpit, who has earned $1.8 million. Asked which of his horses has earned the second-highest amount, Nakatani is hard-pressed for an answer. In the Daily Racing Form’s most recent ranking of the top 40 horses in North America, Nakatani is listed as the jockey on only two--Sandpit and Urbane, a 3-year-old filly who has had Nakatani aboard only for her last two starts.

What Nakatani and his agent, Bob Meldahl, have put together is the classic grind-it-out year: Ride as many horses for as many trainers as you can, and try to be in the right place at the right time for the major assignments.

There have been heartbreaks along the way, none worse than what happened the weekend of the Kentucky Derby. Weeks before the Derby, Nakatani thought that he was in line to ride Thunder Gulch for trainer Wayne Lukas. But when Larry The Legend, Gary Stevens’ Santa Anita Derby winner, was injured, Lukas hired Stevens to ride Thunder Gulch and they won the Kentucky Derby together.

In a late decision, Lukas decided also to run Serena’s Song in the Derby, instead of racing her in the easier spot, against fillies in the Kentucky Oaks the day before. Nakatani had the assignment either way, but after leading the Derby for a mile while running some of the fastest fractional times ever, Serena’s Song finished 16th and Nakatani has not ridden her again. Stevens took over and has won five stakes with the filly.

“I was told that I rode Serena’s Song with too much confidence,” said Nakatani, trying to explain his losing the mount. “I really thought that she was good enough to win the Derby. The only question in my mind was her ability to get the mile and a quarter.”

At 25, Nakatani is 15 years younger than Bailey and seven years Stevens’ junior. Bailey, inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame this year, is favored to win the Eclipse award, although Stevens has won 52 stakes, more than anyone, and averaged a phenomenal $14,468 in purses for every horse he has ridden. Bailey, winning Breeders’ Cup races with Cigar and My Flag last month at Belmont Park, rode horses that earned $2.2 million that day, while Nakatani, with four lightly regarded mounts, did no better than a pair of third-place finishes.

“All three of us have had great years,” Nakatani said. “The number of Grade I’s [16] that Gary has put up there is unbelievable. He’s won a combination of races--the Santa Anita Derby, the Santa Anita Handicap, the Kentucky Derby and all the rest--that might not have ever been done. Bailey’s had a great year too, but where would he be without Cigar?

“I don’t think the Breeders’ Cup should mean as much as it does, because when you look at a rider’s record, you should be considering the entire year. At Santa Anita [last winter], I won most of the Grade I’s [seven of 12], but some of those horses, horses like Queens Court Queen, weren’t around by the time they ran the Breeders’ Cup.”

Since Nakatani, at 18, won his first race at Caliente in Tijuana in 1988, his horses have won more than 1,300 races and earned more than $58 million. Laffit Pincay, soon to be 49, has worked for 31 years, most of them with no $1-million races to ride in, to reach the record of $185 million in purses.

“That’s my ultimate goal, to break Laffit’s record,” Nakatani said. “It would be something to do just because of the record, but especially because Laffit is the one who holds it. Laffit is the best there is. He’s always been my idol. I’ve dedicated my whole career to doing things the way he’s done them.”

In 1988, Nakatani won two races, one of them a dead heat for first at Caliente. He has learned the game by working at Tony Matos’ farm, galloping horses for Johnny Longden, spending time with trainer Jack Van Berg, and in the summer of ‘88, he showed up at the barn of Tommy and Ray Bell at Del Mar.

“He was eager to learn,” Tommy Bell said. “He wanted to be a jockey. Bobby Markus was exercising horses for us then, and they’d go out together with sets of horses.”

Markus, a former jockey and now a valet in the local jockeys’ rooms, still gallops horses.

“Corey was a natural,” he said. “You’d show him things, and he’d learn them in five minutes. I remember that he didn’t know how to cross his reins. You’d show him, and he’d pick up on it just like that.”

In 1989, Nakatani was the leading apprentice in Southern California. He won 24 races at Hollywood Park and 19 at Del Mar. In 1990, he hooked up with his first important horse, the Wally Dollase-trained Itsallgreektome. They teamed to just miss in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Belmont Park, losing by a neck to Royal Academy and Lester Piggott, but the gray colt won the Hollywood Derby and the Hollywood Turf Cup late in the year to clinch the Eclipse award for best male on grass.

Nakatani is married to Michelle Dollase, the trainer’s daughter, and they have three children. Craig Dollase, Michelle’s brother, introduced her to Nakatani when he and his sister were working at their father’s barn.

Nakatani grew up in Covina, the son of a bus driver and the seventh youngest of 10 children. That, not riding in the Kentucky Derby, was pressure.

“We’d scramble around just for a pair of socks,” Nakatani said. “As far back as the fourth grade, I’d be working around the neighborhood to earn money. Raking leaves, anything to make a few bucks.”

Roy Nakatani, his father, enjoyed going to the races and took his son to the track when he was nearly finished with high school. Van Berg, a Hall of Famer, was one of the first trainers he met and gave him encouragement.

A good high-school wrestler, Nakatani has the body strength and athleticism of Pincay, and the equanimity that has helped Pincay through a 31-year career is slowly becoming part of Nakatani’s makeup as well. In 1990, Nakatani broke his hand in a scuffle in the jockeys’ room at Los Alamitos.

“He used to be too cocky,” said trainer Mike Mitchell, who uses Nakatani frequently. “But now he’s more settled, and he’s turned into a great rider. He reminds me of a young Pincay. I’ll put him on any horse I have. He’s versatile enough that he fits them all.”

Nakatani has had some sobering moments the last couple of years: He was close to an 18-year-old cousin who died this year after surgery for cancer, and his grandfather died last year. Nakatani’s father was born in a World War II internment camp in Colorado, and the jockey’s grandparents, who are Japanese, were confined to a war camp at Santa Anita.

“There’s not much talk about those days,” Nakatani said. “My father doesn’t say much about it. My grandparents have never gone to Santa Anita to watch me ride. Their memories of the place are too bad, and they’ve just never wanted to go back there, for any reason. And how can you blame them? Everything they had was taken from them, and they never got it back.”

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Top Jockeys

A look at the national money leaders going into the final weeks of the year, with mounts, wins and earnings. Statistics through Dec. 3: *--*

Jockey Mts W Purse Bailey 1,257 282 $15,771,711 x-Stevens 966 209 $14,044,979 x-Nakatani 1,287 282 $13,850,783 Day 1,140 239 $11,703,300 Smith 1,342 260 $11,586,837

*--*

x--includes international figures