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Jockeys now the stars in Hollywood movie trailers

It’s a very Hollywood story. Racehorse jockeys at California’s Santa Anita Park have been quarantining in movie star trailers parked at the track so they can ride during the coronavirus pandemic.

Jennifer Anniston has been in mine, J-Lo,” veteran jockey Aaron Gryder said of the trailer he’s been living in the past five weekends. “No, I’m kidding,” he quickly added. “But they could’ve been.” 

While other sports and players unions have been looking at ways to create a virus-free environment to start or resume play, Santa Anita has created a bubble that, so far, has worked. After the first five weekends, no jockey had tested positive for COVID-19.

Jockeys Mike Smith and Aaron Gryder have enjoyed the new digs.nate newby

All jockeys get a nasal swab coronavirus test Wednesday morning and they get their results back on Thursday afternoon. “We haven’t had any issues in the jockey colony … everybody tests negative,” Gryder said. “We check into our trailers Friday morning, and once we check into our trailers, we are there until races end on Sunday.”

It’s nice inside the trailers, which came from Hollywood movie sets, Gryder said. There is a flat-screen television where the jockeys can watch the races they are not riding in. There’s a refrigerator, desk, bathroom, shower and a couch. 

Santa Anita Park has been leasing 20 trailers, many of which have two apartment units, since mid-May, as part of a plan to get approval from the Los Angeles County Health Department to allow racing at the famed racetrack. 

Santa Anita, like many thoroughbred tracks across the country, had been conducting spectator-less racing when the pandemic shutdown began. Santa Anita, which is about 15 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, started running without fans on March 12, with the approval of the California Horse Racing Board. But on March 27, a Friday, the track shut down just before the first race on the order of the Los Angeles County Health Department.

There were no COVID-19 positives among the approximately 750 backstretch workers who care for the about 1,700 horses there. But county officials were worried about virus transmission from people coming and going to the track. After much negotiation, Santa Anita came up with a plan to quarantine the jockeys as part of an agreement with the health department, said Nate Newby, Santa Anita senior vice president and assistant general manager. 

“They wanted the jockeys to live on-site and also that they weren’t going into the stable area,” Newby said, of the concerns of health department officials. “So we came up to a idea of ‘What if we built a quarantine area and kept them out of the stable area and tested them in?’” The health officials agreed to it.  

Santa Anita originally reached out to recreational vehicle companies, but everything had been booked, Newby said. “The Department of Water & Power had rented a bunch of them, the fire department, the sheriff’s department, a couple of them — everything was gone.”    

The trailers provide comfortable temporary homes so racing can continue at Santa Anita Park.nate newby

Newby’s wife, Sterling Ferguson, is a former actress. Ferguson reminded Newby that all film and television production in the Los Angeles area had been shut down because of the pandemic, and trailers that housed actors and actresses on set were probably available. 

Newby reached out to Star Waggons, a Los Angeles-based company that has provided trailers for major television and film productions for 40 years. Jason Waggoner, president of Star Waggons, said a trailer for a studio-type show can run from $1,200 to $1,500 a week, with top-of-the-line trailers going for about $8,000 a week.

nate newby

Jockeys are independent contractors and have a guild, but they don’t have a union that negotiates terms and conditions of employment. So it was up to them, individually, to agree to the plan. Some had trepidations in the beginning, but in the end, all the jockeys agreed. 

“At first I wasn’t happy about it at all,” said hall of fame jockey Mike Smith, who has ridden many great horses including Zenyatta and Triple Crown winner Justify. “I couldn’t imagine what kind of trailer it would be or what it would look like. You know you have to be away from home in this little bitty trailer.”

But Santa Anita gave him a tour ahead of time and it was much better than he expected it would be. “They showed it to us, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow.’”  

The jockeys aren’t in the trailers all the time. At night, they all have dinner in the 100 to 1 Club at the giant track. They social distance, wear masks when they are not eating and have dinner brought in from restaurants and horse owners. Newby and others have cooked out. And they have held socially distant poker games and jockey karaoke. Both Gryder and Smith said they got to know each other better than they ever did riding during normal times. 

Jockeys wear masks when they are exercising horses and riding races. Both Gryder and Smith said they feel safe eating and socializing there because they know every person in the quarantine area has tested negative every week for the coronavirus. “You certainly feel more comfortable knowing that than going in the grocery store, I will tell you that,” Smith said.  

The plan is to keep the trailers at the track through its racing season, which ends June 21.

Gryder’s been riding for 34 years. He won the richest race on the globe in 2009, the Dubai World Cup, and has been on the backs of some really great horses, like Sunday Silence and Bayakoa. But these past few weeks is something Gryder said he will never forget. 

“I have stories throughout my racing career,” Gryder said. “But 10 years from now I could tell these young kids, ‘There was a time that we lived in trailers.’ I am so glad I was at Santa Anita during this time and got to experience it.”

 

Liz Mullen can be reached at lmullen@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @SBJLizMullen. 

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