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‘Such A Good Feeling’: Jockey Sahin Civaci Glad To Be Back Racing At Woodbine

His first mount of the 2021 Woodbine season wasn't a winning one, but for Sahin Civaci, it was a good start.

The fourth race on Woodbine's opening day card on June 12 attracted a field 11 fillies and mares, 3-year-olds and up, including Pipestone, bred and owned by Chiefswood Stables.

A 4-year-old daughter of Munnings, the dark bay departed the gate as the 3-1 second choice in the seven-furlong journey over the Toronto oval Tapeta.

At the wire, Civaci and Pipestone settled for second prize, 4 ¼-lengths behind the favored Shedat.

There was no winner's circle photo, but for Civaci, simply being back in action, to reconnect with the feeling of being in the irons, was a victory in itself.

“Of course, the goal is to always win. But I was happy with the effort and I was happy to ride for Chiefswood and [trainer] Stuart Simon. This mare will be hard to beat next time out. Just to be back racing, it was such a good feeling for myself and for everyone else.”

After a successful run at his hometown oval, Hastings Park, which began in 2014, Civaci made the decision to set up shop in Toronto two years ago.

Being the new jockey on the block presented its share of challenges. But after a modest start at Canada's Showplace of Racing, he would eventually find his stride.

“Coming to a big track like Woodbine can be intimidating to some people, even myself,” who was born in Vancouver but at the age of 10 moved with his parents to their native Ankara, Turkey. “That first year was a little difficult, getting adjusted to a new situation. After I got through all of that, I felt very comfortable. I feel very comfortable now and I'm very happy with where I am at.”

He can readily recall his first trip to the Woodbine winner's circle and the trip itself.

The milestone moment came on June 5, 2019, aboard Phil's Glory, an Ontario-bred daughter of Philanthropist.

Sent off at 7-2, Phil's Glory, bred and then owned by Paul Buttigieg, rallied for a half-length score in the 1 1/16-mile main track race.

“I loved that race. We came from off the pace, we ran down the horse that was on the lead and got them at the wire. It was definitely rewarding. I got a lot of calls from people back at Hastings. I have a lot of support from back there, so it meant a lot to have so many people reach out to congratulate me.”

Civaci has had plenty of other reasons to celebrate since settling in Ontario.

In 2019, he won 39 races in 363 starts. Last year, he boosted his win total to 47 from 434 starts.

His goals for this year won't come as a surprise.

“I want win more races than I did in 2020 and to also be in more races, and in the bigger races. I was really happy with last year's performance. Each year, it seems like it is getting better and better, and opportunities are opening up for me. I'm just pleased with how everything is going.”

That would also apply to his life away from the races.

When he's not getting a leg up, Civaci can be found indulging in his passion for gaming, going for a walk with his girlfriend Alyssa, or taking care of their pet hedgehog, Bruce.

“I like going out for walks with my girlfriend, and we'll also watch movies on Netflix too,” said the 27-year-old, who lists the 1996 movie Jingle All the Way as his all-time favorite. “I love to play videogames, too, so I do that a lot. You just really try to take advantage of any downtime you get. It's a good balance to have. I'm very happy with how things are in my life.”

The rider with 202 lifetime wins, including a victory aboard Calgary Caper in the Grade 3 BC Premier's Handicap three years ago, will hope to echo those same words at the conclusion of this year's Woodbine Thoroughbred meet.

He's looking forward to the journey.

“I'm going to continue to work hard to get more opportunities to ride. The key for me is to always do better than the year before. That's what pushes me every time I go into the gate. Win or lose, I always give my best.”

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Newly-Turned Journeyman Charlie Marquez Keeps Up His Momentum At Pimlico

A quick look will show Charlie Marquez still on top of the rider standings at historic Pimlico Race Course during its extended Preakness Meet, a spot the teenage sensation has held for weeks, but a closer looks reveals one significant change.

Marquez's name no longer appears in the program with an asterisk, known as the “bug” in racing parlance, meaning the 18-year-old Columbia, Md. native has graduated from apprentice to journeyman. Nearly three weeks in, the transition has been seamless.

“So far, it's been pretty straightforward. I had to swap agents because they're not allowed to have three journeyman,” Marquez said. “So far we've done a good job, just trying to work hard every day and win as many races as we can.”

Marquez hired Tom Stift, who also represents injured jockey Alex Cintron, to be his agent after having success with Marty Leonard, who books mounts for champion riders Sheldon Russell and Jevian Toledo.

“They all have the stigma when they lose the bug. Trainers will all watch the first couple weeks,” Stift said. “He really had a great first two weeks without the bug. I'll get a message from a trainer and they'll say, 'But he lost the bug,' and then I'll show them a screen shot of all his wins without the bug and they say, 'Ok, put him on.' He's crossed that hurdle.”

Marquez won on the fourth mount of his first day as a journeyman, May 30, with Tusk for trainer Mary Eppler at Pimlico. Through June 16, he had a record of 7-6-8 from 51 mounts since losing his five-pound weight allowance.

During an apprenticeship that was interrupted for 2 ½ months when Maryland racing was paused from mid-March to late May amid the coronavirus pandemic, Marquez won his first race at 16 (Sierra Leona, Jan. 9, 2020 at Laurel Park), spent the final three months of last year riding in New York under the tutelage of retired Hall of Famer Angel Cordero Jr., and returned to Maryland to start 2021 and earn his first stakes win (21-1 Shackled Love, March 14 Private Terms at Laurel).

A son and grandson of successful jockeys in both the U.S. and Puerto Rico, Marquez has also dealt with his first injury. He emerged from an Oct. 10 spill at Belmont Park with what was initially thought to be a fractured right wrist but turned out to be a sprain. He rode three races Oct. 18 before taking the next four weeks off.

Marquez ended 2020 as the leading apprentice rider in Maryland with 58 wins, ranking seventh overall, and for the year finished with 71 wins and $1,981,358 in purse earnings from 531 mounts. He was not among the three finalists for the Eclipse Award as champion apprentice won by Alexander Crispin, also based in Maryland.

“Other than covid ruining most of it, I thought I had a good bug year and I'm just trying to keep the good luck rolling,” Marquez said. “I just try to study all the riders every day and learn as much as I can. Every day I just try to progress my learning.”

His dedication shows in Marquez's eagerness to ride at various tracks in the Mid-Atlantic region, and with the ease in backstretch restrictions he is able to go to Delaware and the Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Md. to exercise horses. He also finished his studies and earned his GED to focus on his career.

“You can tell he's just got natural hands on a horse, that's the biggest thing. And he's just getting better. He's only 18, he's got a good future ahead of him,” Stift said. “He does whatever he's asked, he works hard, he's always early to the barn. It's nice to have a young rider like that who's just happy to ride.

“He's real family-oriented. He's very close with his mom and, bringing him up around the racetrack, you've got to give her a lot of credit,” he added. “A lot of times when they get to the track and they're young and win right away and get the money they get a big head, but he's just a nice kid.”

Marquez maintains a four-win advantage over J.D. Acosta (26-22) at Pimlico and is named in six of eight races for Friday's return of live racing that features a Maryland state record carryover jackpot in the 20-cent Rainbow 6 of $1,093,866.34.

“[My mom Valerie is] like my number one fan. She's with me everywhere I go. She's my right hand. I have to give her credit for everything that I've earned,” Marquez said. “I get asked all the time [about my goals] and it's always the same: I want to win the Derby one day and be in the Hall of Fame. That's just what work toward every day.”

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‘Old-School Guy’ Jose Ferrer Enjoying The Hot Hand At Monmouth Park

Jockey Jose Ferrer will often dust off one of his favorite expressions to make sense of having booted home an improbable longshot, as was the case in last Saturday's Grade 3 Salvator Mile at Monmouth Park, when he won with Informative at odds of 79-1.

One is that the horses can't read the tote board.

The other is that you can't win by staying in the jockeys' room.

These days, he may want to add one more to his list: Age is just a number.

The 57-year-old Ferrer heads into Monmouth Park's Friday twilight card as the track's leading rider after 10 days of the 53-day meet, with 16 winners from 56 mounts (a 29 percent clip). He combined for seven winners last Saturday and Sunday at Monmouth.

“It's been fantastic lately. It's an unbelievable feeling,” said Ferrer, who has ridden 4,575 winners in a career that began in 1982. “You get those times where everything goes right for you, when everything seems to click.

“That's where I feel I am now.”

Ferrer, who won his only Monmouth Park riding title in 2018, sees no reason his early success can't continue through the end of the meet. Overall, he has hit the board with 32 of his 56 mounts.

It's not as if he is riding a majority of favorites either. Nearly half (seven) of his winners so far have paid $12 or more and three have returned $30 or more, topped by the $161.60 win price that Informative produced.

Informative's victory skews the numbers a bit, of course, but Ferrer's average win price at the Monmouth meet is $20.60.

“I've had good stretches where I've won three or four in a day and then came back and won three or four the next day,” he said. “But to win the Salvator Mile, a Grade 3, with such a long shot and to win three other races on the card, two with longshots, and then three the next day … that's a pretty good stretch.”

Ferrer is able to excel at an age when most jockeys are nearing the end of their careers in large part because of his fitness regimen.

It's almost at the point where he is obsessed with working out. He says he is in the best shape of his life.

“I lift a lot of weights. I try to work out and lift twice a day,” he said. “I'll lift before I go to the track and on off days. I ride a bike whenever I can, too. Monday through Thursday I ride a couple of miles with my wife and (two) kids. I know I have to work twice as hard as the younger guys do. You have to put in the work.

“A lot of younger guys spend their time on social media. I'm old school. I don't have time for that. I need to work out and stay fit to stay competitive every day I go out there to ride. I have learned you have to work if you want good things to happen. They don't just happen because you want them to.”

Ferrer also enjoys the role of elder statesman that he has in the jockeys' room at Monmouth, always willing to pass along his accrued knowledge with an inquisitive young rider. In 2018 he won the prestigious George Woolf Award, which has been presented annually since 1950 to a jockey who demonstrates high standards of personal and professional conduct on and off the racetrack.

“It's a blessing to keep riding this long and at my age,” said Ferrer. “I like that some of the younger guys come to me for my knowledge. I am always there to help if I can. Older riders helped me when I was coming up. So I feel like I should share my knowledge and experience.”

Ferrer, who hails from Santruce, Puerto Rico, has also made a seamless transition to New Jersey's strict no crop rule – an adjustment that would seem to be easier for younger riders not as set in their ways.

But the opposite is true, says Ferrer.

“It goes back to being an old-school guy when you would mostly hand ride in the 1980s and 1990s,” he said. “That's when you depended more on pushing a horse with the reins. So it's almost back to the 1980s for me and how I was brought up riding. The stick back then was the weakest link in your riding. I was always hand riding. You didn't use the whip until you absolutely had to use it.

“So this is my foundation. I came up hand riding.”

He also came up winning – something he is still doing, all these years later.

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‘They Just Didn’t Wait’: De Sousa, Horseplayers Frustrated By Starter At Royal Ascot

Jockey Silvestre de Sousa expressed his frustrations with the starter at Royal Ascot to the Racing Post on Thursday, after an incident in Wednesday's final race saw the gates open before he could remove the hood from his mount, Stunning Beauty. De Sousa was forced to immediately pull up the horse, but after a lengthy 30-minute delay, stewards officially ruled Stunning Beauty had been a starter.

“The hood didn't come off so I couldn't race,” de Sousa told the Racing Post. “He could have waited two more seconds for me to get it off, but he wouldn't wait and opened the stalls before I could take the hood off. I was shouting, there was a lot of talking going on in there, and they could have waited for me. They just didn't wait.”

Gamblers were also frustrated, as the stewards' decision meant no refunds or deductions would be given out.

A report from the stewards said: “The stewards only have the power to declare a horse a non-runner if it has been prevented from starting due to a faulty action of the stalls or the horse is riderless at the time the start was effected. As De Sousa was mounted at the time the start was effected and there was no faulty action of the starting stalls, Stunning Beauty was deemed to have started.”

In an article in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Jockey Club chief steward Kim Kelly said bettors wagering on the race via the world pool ought to have received a refund, and in fact would have if the race had occurred in Hong Kong.

“The IFHA (International Federation of Horseracing Authorities) have introduced a model rule into the international agreement dealing with non-runners but not everyone has signed up to it,” Kelly said. “I have no doubt at all she would have been declared a non-runner (here). The old saying is that to lose money you've got to be able to win money.”

Read more at the Racing Post and the South China Morning Post.

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