In tiny Selah, in Washington’s fertile Yakima Valley, Travis Wales went out for high school football as a sophomore. For a small boy sometimes teased about being part of Selah High’s “hick” contingent living outside of town, football was a way to assimilate.
“The only helmet that fit me was from the junior high, and it was black,” Wales recalled, sitting in the otherwise deserted Arapahoe Park clubhouse this week. “We were the Vikings, and the helmets were yellow. Mine’s black. I kept taking mine off and putting it down. One time, the coaches yelled at me to get in the drill, so I ran out there and caught a pass without my helmet — my odd helmet. So a coach yelled at me again. ‘Wales, are you crazy? Put your helmet on!’ “
Then, thinking of the movie, “Outlaw Josey Wales,” the coach called the little sophomore, “Outlaw Travis Wales.”
“I liked it,” Wales said. “I was ‘Outlaw!’ And it stuck.”
Now 35, the three-time Arapahoe Park riding champion still accepts the rogue’s image. When he guided E F Five, a 4-year-old colt, to a wire-to-wire win in the $40,000 Front Range Stakes on Independence Day, Wales pumped his fist with gusto past the finish line and didn’t stop there. He hammed it up for video cameras, grabbed two U.S. flags for winner’s circle pictures and raised them as winning owner Linda Robertson held the trophy and laughed at Wales’ enthusiasm.
The Colorado horse-racing community is used to Wales’ outgoing self-assurance, and it still rubs a few the wrong way. But after nearly a decade of coming to the Aurora track’s annual May-to-August meeting, Wales seems to have generally earned that smiling acceptance afforded successful, if quirky athletes: Aw, that’s just . . .
Aw, that’s just Travis, The Outlaw.
Wales is a cutthroat competitor who can treat cheap claiming races with the seriousness of a stakes race, and he is tough enough to have missed less than a month of riding last year because of a broken collarbone that might have sidelined a baseball player for months.
“I kind of grow on people . . . slowly,” Wales said, smiling.
One of those he has won over — mostly — is Arapahoe’s leading trainer, Temple Rushton, who gives Wales frequent work.
“He’s a great rider,” Rushton said. “He’s come up through the ranks and he’s a ‘try-er.’ ” Rushton laughed.
“But sometimes when he’s riding against you, he’s a little hard to handle,” Rushton said. “Whenever he wins, he gives you that No. 1 sign . . . and I’m behind him. He’s a real character sometimes.”
“The money’s good”
During the Arapahoe meeting, Wales lives in his RV on the grounds, rides his motorbike, plays golf on off days, and is a karaoke-singing hit at the barbecues.
“I’ve loved it here,” he said. “It reminds me a lot of Yakima (Downs), the track where I grew up, where everyone helps each other. There are kids running around here whose dads are trainers. This is what I was used to.”
Wales, who won riding titles in 2004, 2007 and 2008, is second in the Arapahoe jockey standings at the current meeting, with 20 victories, 14 seconds and 10 thirds in 92 rides, and an impressive in-the-money performance of 48 percent. Wales trails only Russell Vicchrilli, the track’s top rider of the past few years.
“The money’s good, better now,” Wales said, “and I’m having such a good meet. I think if I continue like this, have maybe five more years like this one” — he knocked on the wood counter — “then I’d be in position to do something else.”
In addition to Arapahoe Park, Wales’ annual circuit now usually includes Will Rogers Downs in Oklahoma, Albuquerque and Turf Paradise in Phoenix. He’s looking to get into training or stable management and has some leads. For now, he wants to keep riding. It’s in his blood.
While in the U.S. Army, Dale Wales met and married Travis’ mother, Christie, in the Philippines and brought her to the Yakima Valley. Dale began a jockey career of his own at Yakima Downs about the time Travis was born in October 1975.
The family moved closer to Selah when Travis was in third grade.
“I remember going to church the first time and how everyone looked at us,” Travis said. “Our best was blue jeans and a nice shirt, not a shirt and tie.”
Travis haunted the track, including the period when his father began making the transition from riding to training as Travis was starting high school. Noting Travis’ interest, crusty trainer Dennis Ward told him one morning: “Son, if you want to be a rider, you gotta eat, drink, sleep riding and that can be the only thing you want.”
Reassessing, Travis stopped showing up at the track and instead dived into managing the high school’s store and trying sports. He came back to the track to work for Ward and other trainers after his 1994 high school graduation. “I tacked the horses, I brushed ’em, I saddled ’em, I galloped ’em, I put ’em on the walker,” he said. He was astounded that he got $6 for galloping horses, and he was tireless.
Aqueduct on the resume
After breaking in as apprentice jockey at Washington tracks, his riding resume has included stints at such eastern tracks as Aqueduct (in the later stages of his apprentice weight allowance) in Queens, N.Y.; Finger Lakes in upstate New York; Monmouth Park at the Jersey Shore and Garden State in New Jersey; and even brief work in Florida. But he couldn’t quite parlay that into a breakthrough to the upper echelon of the profession.
It’s a familiar jockey’s story: He has worked at many of the second-tier tracks in the Southwest and Midwest, and has come to accept being a bigger fish in those small ponds. Sunday, in fact, he rode in eight of the nine Arapahoe Park races. Between the guaranteed riding fee or the share of the purse if the horse finishes in the money, he makes a solid living.
“As the years pass, the moving around gets old,” he said. “It’s four months here, four months there. I love it here in Denver, but it would be nice if this track ran a little longer every year. We have a great fan base and our money keeps going up despite the fact that we don’t have a casino here. I just think there’s so much potential. I don’t have all the answers, but it has a lot to offer. It’s so close to breaking through. The next step is having the community embrace it.”
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
Bank on Travis Wales
Career rides: 5,615
Firsts: 720
Seconds: 673
Thirds: 678
Rides’ earnings: $7.54 million
In the money: 36.9 percent
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