With Weight Problem Under Control, Seville Riding High

Ralph Seville can sit on a worn sofa in the drab jockey room at Los Alamitos Race Course and talk about his weight problem in front of peers with a sense of control. The dark side of the business, where some manage weight by binge eating, drug use or five-hour saunas isn’t pretty. Most don’t discuss it.

Four years ago, popping prescription diet aids as if they were candy, Seville had a spiritual awakening, quit riding and moved to Idaho to sort things out.

A couple of weeks ago he earned his 500th victory at Los Alamitos, the 26th jockey in the 46-year history of the track to do so.

“Things are working out pretty well right now,” Seville said. “I have a nice home for my family. I’ve paid off my bills. But it was real tough there for a while.”

Seville, 30, has battled a weight problem for years, reaching 160 pounds less than three months ago, He lives in fear that his weight problem will stifle a career that has been one of the most consistently successful at Los Alamitos the last 15 seasons.

Not long ago, he was thrown into a rail during a training accident aboard an untested 2-year-old and sustained a concussion. While recuperating, his weight rose dramatically.

As he discussed the incident, Seville was extremely disgusted with his plight. “I’ve been struggling with weight again,” he said.

Nevertheless, he is back in the saddle and had a victory on Sunday’s card.

The race course always has been Seville’s home away from home. His grandfather, a card-playing, horse-betting man, often brought his 4-year-old grandson to the track and it stuck with the boy.

Seville, who lived in a small southern sliver of Buena Park that parallel’s Valley View Avenue, went to the track almost every day when he wasn’t in school. By the time he was a high school sophomore, Seville was galloping horses at the track. He dropped out of Cypress High in 1981 when he was 15, but earned a diploma by passing a state proficiency exam.

The major obstacle in his career has been his weight.

Three weeks before the start of the current meet, Seville reported more than 40 pounds overweight and with a stack of personal bills that outweighed him. He rode training workouts at Hollywood Park and Los Alamitos, but those didn’t pay that well. To make the big money, the kind Seville needed, he had to race.

But he wondered if he could get his weight down and keep it there.

Until his most recent incident, he was a consistent 119 pounds.

“I prayed a lot,” he said.

He restricts himself each day to a small salad, two carrot sticks, two eggs and a few vitamins. He sweats off pounds by training horses at 6 a.m. each morning.

He wasn’t always that disciplined, he said, because, “I just like to eat.”

He would make weight Thursdays through Sundays at Los Alamitos, and eat like a horse Mondays through Wednesdays.

“He would eat just about anything you put in front of him,” fellow jockey Justin Vitek said.

He used the steam room to help maintain his weight, but it took its toll on his health.

“It made me tired and I couldn’t perform that well,” Seville said. “I would sleep through the day. When I would eat, I would feel guilty, so I would take two [diet] pills instead of one.”

Seville eventually lost the battle. In mid-1992, hooked on amphetamines and thyroid medication, Seville was suspended several days by stewards for careless riding. Worse, his weight was out of control again.

That’s when he and his family moved to Idaho, where he got a job working with handicapped kids.

“I’d never been around handicapped people before,” he said. “It was a real experience, one that I enjoyed.”

In Idaho’s fresh air, with no pressure to monitor weight, Seville kicked the diet-pill habit. He settled his family into a small trailer in Pocatello and galloped horses on the weekends at local farms to make a little money, but he had no interest in returning to the racing.

A freak accident changed his mind. He was thrown from a horse during a training ride, broke his hip and several bones in his face that required partial facial reconstruction.

“While I was healing, my muscles got soft and I began to lose weight because I wasn’t doing anything,” he said. “Suddenly keeping weight off wasn’t a problem.”

Trim and feeling better than he had in years, Seville returned to ride at Los Alamitos for the last seven weeks of the 1993 meet. His weight hovered around the 125-mark. He won 20 races in 120 mounts and for the first time in a long time felt as if he had his life under control.

That feeling was short-lived. By October of last year, the weight problem had returned. He finished the meet, but when he came in this spring at 161 pounds, there were doubts that he would ride again.

But Seville has been relentless in his weight control. Perhaps he has a maturity he didn’t have when he was younger.

“Right now I have everything in place,” he said. “I have three children, a beautiful wife, a nice home, all my bills are paid and I’m riding. That’s great.”

Seville is handy around the barns, good with horses.

“Ralph is a real nice, quiet guy,” track spokesman John Petti said. “He’s very friendly. People like him. He’s a hard worker.”

Ranked 19th nationwide last year with about $500,000 in purses, Seville has won 21 races at Los Alamitos this season. If he successfully maintains riding weight, he could double his number of victories in the next 10 years.

That’s too far away for him to think about, he admits. Making weight is a day-to-day struggle. For now, he’s content to ride until his body won’t cooperate any longer.