Apprentice Chaves Acting Like a Winner

When he was in high school, Nate Chaves acted in a production of “Hamlet.”

Did he play the lead?

“No,” Chaves said. “I wasn’t big enough.”

The 107-pound Chaves is just the right size, though, for his current undertaking, which is riding horses at Santa Anita.

You won’t find Chaves’ name in the Santa Anita media guide, and he’s not listed among the apprentices who are considered the top candidates for a 1996 Eclipse award, but local railbirds already know that a Chaves mount is not to be routinely dismissed. At the recently completed Hollywood Park meet, Chaves won 22 races, tying for fifth place in the standings. Finishing farther down the list were Chris McCarron, Laffit Pincay and Eddie Delahoussaye, who are all in the Racing Hall of Fame.

Quickly impressed with Chaves’ horsemanship, and aware that an apprentice gets a five-pound break in the weights, trainers needed little persuasion from Joe Griffin to give the 21-year-old rider all the assignments he could hope for. During the 36-day meet, only two riders--Alex Solis, who led the standings, and Rene Douglas--rode in more races.

Griffin is the agent who coaxed Chaves away from Emerald Downs, an easier circuit near Seattle, toward the end of the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita.

“I had never met him,” Chaves said. “But he called and told me there were no bugs [apprentices] to speak of down here, and I might be able to do some good. Everybody at Emerald said that I’d get buried down here. But I knew that if I came, I’d try my hardest. I’ve had some nice horses to ride, and that’s made the difference.”

The interview with Chaves was done between races, on a sofa in the back of the jockeys’ room at Hollywood Park, and politely listening in was Gary Stevens, who was also getting a breather. Unintentionally, Chaves is beating a path that Stevens, now one of the country’s top riders, traveled years ago: They were good wrestlers in high school; they both rode early in Idaho and Seattle, and now they’re competing at Santa Anita.

Chaves, who is from Auburn, Wash., about 25 miles south of Seattle, was a state wrestling champion his junior year in high school. With a wrestling scholarship in the offing, he would have gone to Idaho State, where he might have studied drama, but as a senior, he wrecked his left knee in a match.

As a teenager, Chaves wanted to follow his uncle, Tom Dahlquist, into race riding, but his father insisted that he finish high school first. Dwayne Chaves, a supervisor for an oil company, was cautious about the racing business because Dahlquist, who did start young, had off-the-track problems that compromised his career.

Nate Chaves barely knew the front end of the horse from the back.

“I was a city boy,” he said. “I had never been around horses.”

The Gibsons--H.R. and Claude--gave Chaves a job at their farm, not quite believing how green he was.

“I had never brushed a horse,” Chaves said. “I had never been in a stall with one before.”

Chaves finally made his way to the track, galloped horses for more than a year and last May, with his first mount, won a race at Sun Downs in Kennewick, Wash. After a stop at Les Bois Park in Boise, Idaho, he went to Emerald Downs, where he won 35 races. He finished eighth in the standings despite leaving a month before the season ended.

One of the first trainers Chaves won with locally was Jack Van Berg.

“I like this kid,” Van Berg said. “I think he’s got a good future. Horses have a tendency to run for him. He’s got the kind of hands that make horses run.”

That sounds like the consensus scouting report on a youthful Bill Shoemaker almost 50 years ago, but of course apprentices come and go in racing, especially on circuits such as Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. Sal Gonzalez Jr. and Jose Valdivia are only two hot young jockeys who left in recent years when their business soured.

Chaves’ apprenticeship ends in early June.

“I know I’m trying to move way up in class,” he said. “There’s a 100% difference between this jockey colony and the one I came from. Around here, the other riders don’t give you anything.

“It’s just a dream to be here. It’s not going to hurt me to learn what I’m learning. . . . If I eventually have to leave, though, there are a lot of other tracks around. I’ve never minded traveling.”

Horse Racing Notes

Don Driscoll, executive director of the Nevada Pari-Mutuel Assn., said Friday that the California Horse Racing Board pulled the plug Thursday on the scheduled simulcasts from Golden Gate Fields and Los Alamitos to Nevada racebooks.

“All indications are that Nevada will not receive a signal from those tracks in the foreseeable future,” said Driscoll, whose group represents 44 racebooks. Driscoll said that Golden Gate and Los Alamitos, which is running a harness meet, have racing board-approved contracts with the racebooks.

The board, which says that California tracks are not being sufficiently compensated for supplying their television signals, has also stopped the simulcasts from Santa Anita, which signed a four-year contract with Nevada a year ago.

Alex Solis rode a pair of stakes winners at Santa Anita on Friday, winning the filly division of the California Breeders’ Champion Stakes with Rexy Sexy and the Reloy with Fajica. . . . Fernando Valenzuela is leaving California to ride in Dubai.