Triple Crown favorite's neighbors at Belmont Park live in a different world

Trainer Bob Ribaudo, 63, takes the boots off of Liquify, a horse broken by Ocala's Niall Brennan, as Exercise Rider Enrique "Kike" Garcia, 36, prepares to gallop the horse on the track Thursday morning, at the Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y.

Doug Engle/ Ocala Star-Banner
Published: Friday, June 6, 2014 at 5:25 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, June 6, 2014 at 7:21 p.m.

ELMONT N.Y. — Water dripped from Enrique Garcia's helmet as he rode the filly Liquify slowly toward Barn 32.

His jeans and padded vest were also soaked Thursday from the soft rain that started in the morning and would not let up. His riding crop stuck from his back pocket like a flagpole announcing his arrival from the Belmont Park track after galloping the yet-unraced filly.

The 36-year-old exercise rider passed the media throng at Barn 26 where reporters and photographers tried to peer at Triple Crown hopeful California Chrome. The Belmont Stakes favorite is in seclusion. The view to his stall blocked when he returns from the track but that does not keep the dozens of media people from coming anyway.

Garcia could have been as naked a Lady Godiva on his filly and Barn 26 would never have noticed his passing just a few feet away.

In Barn 32, less than a stone's throw from California Chrome's stall, life went on as normal during the week leading to the Belmont Stakes, the final leg of the Triple Crown. It is immune from the Triple Crown talk after California Chrome won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes three weeks ago.

In the aging barn the floors are dirt and the high, vaulted wooden ceiling is spotted with spider webs and makeshift patches to keep the rain out. The occasional bird lands looking for a meal and pecks through the straw on the stall floors for whatever morsel the horses might have left behind.

There is not much talking in trainer Bob Ribaudo's Barn 32. His two exercise riders and four grooms and hot walkers have worked for him for many years and know their jobs. The silence is broken when one of the 15 horses under Ribaudo's care returns from the track and walks around the shed row to recover from its exercise.

Garcia's shirt is stained from sweat and the rain that seeped under his vest, meant to protect him if he falls off his horse.

His mother was working as a groom at Belmont Park when he left his home in Puebla, south of Mexico City, to start high school in this country and look for a part-time job as a groom and hot walker.

"I swam over," Garcia said of his journey.

He has since married and has two children and is a salaried exercise rider. To make extra money he sometimes picks up a few extra mounts from neighboring barns, making $15 per ride.

His work day begins at 5:30 am. He leaves at noon to pick up his daughters from school and brings them home and keeps the house.

He doesn't begrudge Barn 26 its celebrity. He can hear the cameras click as pictures are taken there when the horse arrives and leaves.

"It's better this way," he said in a thick accent while looking around his own barn. "The horses are relaxed here."

Being wet and cold is part of the job sometimes.

"That's OK," he said, standing by a stall with a horse trying to sniff him. "The horses have to train. If they don't train, they don't run."

"In the winters it's tough," he added. "Some (trainers) don't care if it's zero degrees. They send you out. But I love it."

He wants better for his two daughters though.

"I tell them, ‘You have to go to school,' " Garcia said. "But they always come to the track. They love horses. One wants to be a veterinarian. That I like, if she wants to be a veterinarian, but she has to go to school."

It's a small world in racing. Liquify was broken and trained by Ocala-based Niall Brennan. All of Ribaudo's horses are broken by Brennan.

It's a bigger world for German Bravo, who is on a U.S. government program that allows him to work in the United States eight months a year before he must go back to Mexico.

During those eight months he does not see his wife and three young children. He spends his spare time improving his English using language video discs. He lives on the park grounds in a dorm with other grooms and shares a room with a roommate.

Bravo, 33, has worked for Ribaudo for the past eight years. He was a groom in Mexico before landing the job here. His formal education in Mexico ended because his parents could not afford to send him to high school.

He takes care of four Ribaudo horses and is responsible for attending to almost all of their needs, from bathing the animals after each exercise to cleaning their stalls to washing their ankle wraps and rewrapping the horses before they exercise again. It is the groom's face the horses see more than any other. If a horse is injured or ill, the groom is often the first to spot it.

His work day begins 5 a.m. and ends at noon. He often comes back to the barn in the afternoons. The work is physically demanding but better than what Mexico had to offer.

"The life in Mexico is hard and very dangerous," he said, wet from hauling dirty stray bedding to a dump site.

He likes the job and can send money home so his children can get a better education. He cannot get permission for them to come over. He has tried.

His ambition is to become a barn foreman one day or maybe even an assistant trainer.

When he goes back to Mexico, he works in a factory with his father.

He pays little attention to Barn 26. There is enough to do in Barn 32 and, after all, it is Barn 32 that feeds his family and offers him a better life.

Ribaudo said "the whole business is tough."

"There's nothing easy about it," he said, sitting in the barn's only office, which also doubles as a storage closet.

He is 63 years old and has been training horses for the past 40. His stable has seen its horses make money and lose it. This is one of the better times for the stable.

"We struggled for a lot of years," he said. "Then, six years ago we had multiple stakes winners."

But the public has lost a lot of interest in the horse racing sport and in the horses, he fears.

"So this is what this business needs," he said, looking over to Barn 26. "It's worth the inconvenience to us."

His days begin at 3:45 a.m. and he is at the track to oversee the care of his horses. He lives only a few minutes drive from Belmont Park.

He does not begrudge the California Chrome owners and trainer their success. Regardless of the horse, the work of the grooms, hot walkers, exercise riders and trainers is the same, he said.

"There's absolutely no question he's a racehorse," Ribaudo said of California Chrome. "What I also respect about him is that, with his pedigree, how far he's come."

"Just getting a yearling from the sales, through the breaking process, getting them to the track and breaking their maiden is a great accomplishment," he said, watching his horses walk the shed row. "So many things could have gone wrong through the process. No, we're blessed with a lot of other things here. It's pretty good.

Contact Fred Hiers at 867-4157 or


▲ Return to Top