Jockey Edwin Maldonado planned to come to Southern California for a few weeks to ride the 2010 Los Angeles County Fair meet at Fairplex Park in Pomona, then return to Evangeline Downs in Louisiana, where he'd been based for several years.
Three weeks have turned into 12 years.
“A jockey friend, Felipe Valdez, called me and said, 'I've got an agent for you if you want to ride in California,'” Maldonado recalled. “He gave me the agent's name, Vic Lipton, and said I needed to call him right away. I called Vic and told him I would come out but only to ride that Fairplex meet and then I was going back to Louisiana. Vic hung up on me.”
Maldonado called Valdez to tell him what had happened. Valdez told Maldonado to call the agent again and “tell him you're staying in Southern California, even if you're really not.”
Maldonado phoned Lipton again, who said, “'You know, kid, I need a commitment or it won't work.”
Maldonado and Lipton combined to win five races from 44 mounts, then moved down the road to Santa Anita for what was then the Oak Tree Racing Association fall meet, followed by the Hollywood Park December meet that led into the winter-spring racing season at Santa Anita. It wasn't easy breaking into a talented riding colony.
“Those first nine months were very, very hard,” said Maldonado. “You tend to doubt yourself.”
Two years after landing in California, Maldonado registered his first riding title there, unseating perennial kingpin Martin Pedroza as the leading rider at Fairplex. He was co-leading rider with Rafael Bejarano during the 2013 spring-summer meeting at Hollywood Park. He's been a mainstay on the circuit ever since.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, on Dec. 1, 1982, and raised in Puerto Rico, Maldonado has racing in his blood. His grandfather was a jockey in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and an uncle, Manuel Alicea, rode primarily in Ohio and Texas.
“My Mom wanted to be a jockey, but her father wouldn't let her,” Maldonado said. “It must run in the family, because one of my daughters wants to be a jockey. I told her, 'As long as I'm alive, that's not going to happen.'”
Why?
“It's not that easy being a jockey,” he said. “You have to love the horses, but you also have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of things. I couldn't go to my daughter's graduation because I had to ride. It's a way of life. Don't get me wrong. I love what I do and I can't see myself doing something else.”
Maldonado paused, then added, “Except boxing. I love boxing. I took boxing lessons after school when I was 13 or 14, but never did any amateur fights.”
Maldonado's road to becoming a leading jockey in California began with racetrack visits to see his uncle ride at Thistledown near Cleveland, Ohio, where he fell in love with the game. His family then moved to Puerto Rico. “My first language was English, then I forgot it,” he joked.
Maldonado left Puerto Rico at 17 and wound up at Canterbury Park in Minnesota with his uncle. He got a job as a hot-walker. The next year, after a return trip to Puerto Rico, he went to Sam Houston, where his uncle was riding.
“I got a job grooming horses for Ramon Flores,” Maldonado said. “First a couple of ponies, and then two horses. He'd take me to his farm where I started jogging, galloping and breaking babies. Before the year ended, he had me galloping horses as Sam Houston.”
Maldonado then followed his uncle to Assiniboia Downs in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was galloping as many as 20 horses a day and after four months took out his jockey license. Maldonado's first win, according to Equibase, came at Assiniboia aboard Starr's Image on Aug. 13, 2002.
Months later, Flores, who helped Maldonado get started, died in an accident on an icy patch of highway while hauling horses to race at Sunland Park in New Mexico.
Maldonado's first graded stakes win came in 2012 aboard Izzy Rules in the Grade 3 Las Flores Stakes at Santa Anita for trainer Jeff Bonde. The latter was trainer of Maldonado's favorite horse, Distinctiv Passion, a multiple graded stakes winner that Maldonado rode in the 2015 Al Quoz Sprint at Meydan in Dubai.
“I got on that horse since he was a baby,” Maldonado said. “It was a great journey. He took me all the way to Dubai. I got to ride him most of his career.”
Maldonado developed a reputation as a “speed rider,” one who gets his mounts out of the gate and forwardly placed. It's not a moniker he appreciates.
“I personally don't like it when people call me a speed rider or front-runner,” Maldonado said. “A speed rider? What is that? When they label you like that, then they think you're one-dimensional.”
Maldonado blames Lipton, his former agent, for the label. (He's now represented by Tony Matos.)
“Vic had a belief that California tracks favor speed horses,” Maldonado said. “By him calling me a speed rider, he said I'd get more speed horses. I consider myself a strong rider who loves coming off the pace. My favorite race would be a mile on dirt with a come-from-behind horse.”
He doesn't mind his other nickname, “Candyman,” given to him by former Major League Baseball all-star Paul LoDuca when he was a TVG racing analyst. The original Candy Maldonado was an MLB star in the 1980s and '90s.
“I used to tape TVG and was watching one day when I heard Paul say, 'We have Candyman, the Candy Maldonado of horse racing here.' I said, 'Did he just call me Candyman?' So I put that name on my pants.”
Maldonado said he looks forward to the summer meet at Del Mar because it's “like a vacation for us. It just feels like a vacation, so close to the beach, and you really feel the vibe from the people. They're so supportive. I just love it.”
When he isn't riding, Maldonado tends to his garden at his home in Covina, about 12 miles east of Santa Anita.
“I love gardening. I plant flowers, try to grow my own fruits and vegetables,” he said. “This job can be very stressful and doing that relaxes my mind. It's very peaceful.”
He's also a big believer in what is known as the “law of attraction,” after having read Rhonda Byrne's best-seller, “The Secret,” a self-help book published in 2006 focusing on the power of positive thinking. He credits that book for a big part of his success.
“Vic Lipton got me into that,” Maldonado said. “If it wasn't for that book I wouldn't have been leading rider in 2013. It comes down to this: what you think about, you bring about.”
Currently seventh in the Del Mar standings with 10 wins, 11 seconds and 11 thirds from 94 mounts, Maldonado says he is “always shooting for the top.”
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