QUARTERMASTER

Paul Jones walks the rows of his barn at Los Alamitos Race Course, inspecting each of the 75 quarter horses he trains in what has become a daily morning ritual.

For two hours, he listens to updates from the six grooms who work for him, dispensing orders in self-taught, fluent Spanish. Some horses are trotted out for more detailed inspection. Others, he merely pets.

“I know every one of these horses,” says Jones, 35, a runaway leader this year in the national trainer standings. “They are like my kids. You name any horse here and I can tell you everything, so many things.”

Asked about a horse named Manhood, scheduled to race that night, Jones responds in full gallop.

“He’s a horse we claimed for $8,000 last season,” the trainer says. “He hadn’t been running well because he had a few physical problems, so we gave him time off and brought him back this season. The first time he ran, he flipped in the gate. We’ve worked to get him settled in the gates. He looks like a horse that will do well for us.”

There is no doubt he could give a similar rundown on any horse in the barn.

The son of a quarter horse trainer, Jones grew up at the track. As a boy, he would tag along while his father worked. He spent much of the last decade climbing the rungs at Los Alamitos.

Now perched on top, Jones might be tempted to move to the more glamorous world of thoroughbred racing, as have former Los Alamitos trainers Wayne Lukas, a four-time Kentucky Derby winner, and Bob Baffert, who saddled Congaree and Point Given for this year’s Derby.

But Jones says he still has more to accomplish with his quarter horses. That includes preparing two horses to run Saturday in the $392,900 Kindergarten Futurity at Los Alamitos. Besides, he is doing quite well as it is, with a home in Cypress and breeding ranch in Chino.

“If I went to thoroughbreds, I would have to start right back at the bottom again,” Jones says. “My horses made $1.5 million last year. There are 150-200 thoroughbred trainers. I can probably count on my hands the number who had horses make $1.5 million last year. I might be better at being the big fish in the small pond.”

A typical day at the track for Jones begins at 6 a.m.

“This is how you like to see a horse before he runs,” Jones says, patting Manhood. “He’s alert. He’s ready.”

Of course he is. Jones trained him.

“All that man thinks about is horses,” says Bob Grimes, who owns 25 horses, all trained by Jones.

In a Spartan-like office by his barn, Jones maps out the future for his horses on a large chart secured to his wood-laminate desk. None of the room’s three chairs can be considered comfortable. The television set sports rabbit ears. The walls are barren, except for a calendar topped with a horse photo.

Jones’ success is built on substance, not style. His telephone rings constantly. He sometimes receives 25 calls in an hour, some from strangers wanting him to train their horses.

“There are a lot of guys who are horse smart around here, but they don’t have horse sense,” says Robert Treasure, who has shoed Jones’ horses for more than a decade. “Paul has horse sense.”

And dedication.

Jones jokes that he didn’t know what a vacation was until he met his wife, Marion. They have no children . . . except those in the stalls.

“We go out to the ranch and Paul tends to his horses and I tend to mine,” Marion Jones says. “I have one, and I go riding.”

The rest of the time, Paul Jones tends to his barn, overseeing the feeding and care of his horses, as well as planning the next move for each.

“When most people go home, their job is over,” Jones says. “I’m still thinking about horses at 11 p.m.”

That attitude has allowed Jones to nudge aside Blane Schvaneveldt, longtime top trainer at Los Alamitos with 38 titles. Jones toppled him in 1998, has won the track title each year since and is on the way to his fourth with 68 winners only four months into this yearlong season. Schvaneveldt is a distant second with 38.

Passing Schvaneveldt wasn’t easy.

“One year, I had Blane beat with a couple months left,” Jones says. “He shipped in a bunch of horses from out of state and wiped me out. He’s that competitive.”

Jones’ makeup is similar, which allowed him to finally defeat Schvaneveldt in 1998. Jones had a track-record 155 winners that year, and sometime during the current meet, he expects to become only the fourth trainer with 1,000 winners at Los Alamitos.

Jones’ father, Paul Jones Sr., had a small stable at Los Alamitos. The son ran around the track as if he owned it, absorbing information.

He learned to speak Spanish after his mother asked him to teach English to two sons of an employee. Jones, 9 at the time, learned Spanish from the pair so well that he was put in the same elementary school class as the two boys to translate for their teacher.

He studied his father’s training techniques and, by 12, was handicapping races, getting adults to place bets for him.

“When Paul was 13, we were coming back from Bay Meadows and I noticed he had a wad of money in his pocket,” his mother, Joyce Jones, says. “I asked him where he got it and he said, ‘Some men at the track. I would tell them what horse would win and they gave me money.’ ”

After graduating from Norco High, Jones spent a year as a jockey agent, a job that required absorbing the track’s condition book, which lists the qualifying conditions for each race.

“If you went to college to learn to be a horse trainer, learning the condition book would be one of the courses,” Jones says.

Paul Jones Sr. had open-heart surgery a year later. His son took over the day-to-day operation of the family barn for four years, in return getting room, board and on-the-job training. In 1988, when his father retired and closed his barn, Jones got his training license and set out on his own with four horses--three of them owned by his parents.

All four won races during Jones’ first Los Alamitos meet.

“I had to win races to get noticed,” Jones says. “You get noticed, you get better horses.”

It is 9:30 p.m. and Jones is still on the job, eyeing a TV monitor in the general admission area at the racetrack. He watches the races from the same spot every night, poring over replays, dissecting his horses’ performances.

At the moment, Jones is watching Manhood being loaded into the starting gate. The horse bucks a little and jockey Ramon Sanchez jumps off.

“That’s smart, Ramon, wait for him to settle down,” Jones says to the TV screen. “You see, if he had stayed on, they might have opened the gate and we would have lost the race right then.”

Tricks of the trade. Manhood settles down. Sanchez settles back in the saddle. The gate flies open.

“Keep him straight Ramon,” Jones yells. “We got the race.”

Jones may top the training standings, but he still is looking for his Holy Grail. A year ago, Copper Buff, a horse he trained, qualified for the All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs in Ruidoso, N.M., last September. A 2-1 morning-line favorite, Copper Buff finished fifth.

“That race is harder to get into than the Kentucky Derby,” Jones says. “It doesn’t matter how much money a horse has won, to get into the All American, you have to run time trials. Out of 170 horses, 10 get in.”

Winning a race like the $2-million-plus All American is one of the few accomplishments that have eluded Jones. But foremost in his mind is to be awarded the national trainer’s title, determined by a board made up of members of the American Quarter Horse Assn.

Jones is well on his way this season. His horses have won $754,709, which puts him more than $300,000 ahead of his closest competition.

“I’ve seen Paul take claimers and make them allowance horses,” Grimes says. “The time and effort he puts in makes the difference. Every owner thinks his horse is a champion. Paul can make that happen.”

Like a preacher researching scripture for his sermon, Jones studies the condition book to make sure the right horses get into the right races.

He is constantly trying to improve his training techniques. Five years ago, Jones reduced the number of workouts for his 2-year-olds. He used the races during the meet as part of their training, keeping them fresh longer.

Each horse receives the royal treatment from Jones during his daily inspection. He handles each tenderly, gently rubbing them around the face.

Of course, there’s a reason for that too.

“I don’t want my horses to be head shy,” Jones says. “First, I like my horses to be friendly. But when a horse goes into a gate, there’s a handler there that grabs ahold. If a horse jerks his head back and they open the gate right then, that’s it, you’ve lost the race.”

Standing in the winner’s circle after Manhood’s victory, Jones poses for the traditional picture with the owners and the jockey.

“This is fun, isn’t it?” he says.

The camera clicks and Jones is off. There’s little time to celebrate when another “kid” is running in the next race.

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Horseplay

National quarter horse trainer standings (through May 13)

MONEY WINNERS

Paul Jones: $754,709

Tony Sedillo: $416,476

Rodney Reed: $358,627

Donna McArthur: $328,464

Blane Schvaneveldt: $328,462

Carlos Sedillo: $286,375

Beverly McNeely: $212,668

Charles Treece: $207,770

Mike Joiner: $196,749

Blane Wood: $195,382

WINS

Paul Jones: 68

Blane Schvaneveldt: 28

Tony Sedillo: 26

Jaime Gomez: 26

Beverly McNeely: 23

Lin Melton: 22

Rodney Reed: 21

K.C. Carden: 21

Rafael Rizo: 19

Charles Treece: 17