Former Jockey Lends Weight To Training Theories -- Now He's Trainer At Longacres Park

-- RENTON

Jose Corrales, who won the Longacres Derby aboard Harmony Creek in 1989 and was the track's second-leading jockey in '88, remembers the day last spring his life took a right turn.

"I was in the hotbox, reducing," said Corrales, whose struggles to make riding weight were legendary at the track. "I was doing my routine and I go outside to check my weight to see how much I lose.

"I said to myself, `I can't do it.' So I got me a pop, went back into the hotbox and told myself I was going to enjoy the whole thing. I told the rider inside, `I quit.' "

His colleague's surprise required an explanation from Corrales.

"My back was hurt. My body was hurt. I had headaches. It was depressing," said the 31-year-old Corrales.

One doesn't have to look much farther than the scale to understand how hard Corrales was working to maintain his riding weight. Over the next three days, his weight zoomed from 119 to 146 pounds.

"He was extremely dedicated," said Lindy Aliment, the track's clerk of scales. "He would come early to hit the box and spend the whole day there."

Now Corrales, who says his weight is 138, spends his days around Barn 32 on the Longacres Park backstretch - as a trainer. Three of the first five horses Corrales saddled at this meet won. Last summer, Corrales finished second with the first horse he started and won with the second. Through Saturday's races, Corrales had won five and placed second four times in 25 starts at the meet.

"He's adapting quick," said Gary Baze, the track's all-time leading stakes rider with 90. "He has a feeling for what needs to be adjusted in the horse. He was very serious as a rider and he's carried it over to the training game."

Ben Harris, the track's leading trainer, agrees.

"He's always paid attention to what other trainers were doing," said Harris. "He deals with people well. I think all he needs to have is the right kind of sponsors."

The Corrales philosophy of training can be boiled down to five words, but he prefers to embellish.

"Pay attention to your horse," he says. "Take care of them like you want to take care of yourself. I don't want my horses dirty. I don't want them walking around with wet feet inside the stable."

Corrales also has specially designed and monogrammed saddlecloths for each of the nine horses he's training, to prevent rashes.

"He's always been very kind with animals," said Grant Holcomb, the track's director of racing. "He's a perfectionist."

That seriousness took seed when he was a 7-year-old in Panama and his parents drove him past the racetrack. He enrolled in the jockey school when he was 14. After graduating two years later, Corrales rode for three years in Panama before coming to the U.S.

He was riding in New York when Wesley Ward, the Yakima-born rider who was the nation's top apprentice in 1984, persuaded Corrales to come to the Northwest.

Corrales made an immediate impression at his first stop, Playfair racetrack in Spokane. He set a track record with 138 winners in 1985. The following season Corrales extracted 190 winners from his mounts, to shatter his mark. It wasn't quite as glamorous as Belmont, Aqueduct or Saratoga, but Corrales managed to pull in around $2,000 a week at a track where winning purses averaged around $1,300 and the jockey's share is ten percent.

Corrales made his Longacres riding debut near the end of the 1986 meet when he flew in from Spokane to guide Spring Trooper to her victory in the $100,000 Longacres Lassie Stakes. Corrales had two wins in three rides that day.

He was Longacres' third-leading rider in 1987 and second in 1988 with 119 victories. His last full season was 1989. Though he won the Longacres Derby that year, he experienced a nightmarish two weeks, dropping from 119 to 109 pounds in order to ride Harmony Creek in the Longacres Mile.

With a pained but proud expression, Corrales tells of eating poached eggs and fish, and spending hour after hour sweating the pounds away.

"I was a strong 109 pounds," he said. "That's because I exercised. I ran every day."

His wife, Jacqueline, tells it a little bit differently.

"There were times I looked at him and I just cried," she said. "It did make people be quiet who said he couldn't do it."

Given all that and the fact he's got one owner, R.W. Aubrey, supplying him with horses, Corrales is considering a return to the jockey ranks.

"I do miss riding," said Corrales, who insists the thrill of riding a good horse surpasses that of training one. "Don't be surprised if I return this year."