Page 11 - The Game May 2006

Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper The Game, May 2006 11
Maree Returns to Race Riding
By Harlan Abbey
A jockey making a comeback after an absence of ten years might be apprehensive about their earning power, but Maree Richards shouldn't have that worry.
Her fine past record earned her commitments to ride three of Fort Erie's best money-winners in past years before the 2006 season even started. So if Lenny The Lender, Pleasant Hall and Open Lock race at near their past form, Richards should bank at least $30,000 for her ten percent of their 2006 earnings -- not a bad cushion for a season that could be rife with uncertainty.
Lenny The Lender, trained and owned by Dick Jukosky, has earned about $100,000 in each of the last three years by winning rarely but
finishing close in some of
Woodbine's richest turf races. Maree has been galloping him since he was claimed four years ago by the Fort Erie-based Jukosky.
Pleasant Hall, trained by Myckie Neubauer, won two $30,000 Fort Erie Cup Races and had four seconds at the $60,000 claiming level at Woodbine, banking $200,000 for the year. Open Lock, trained by Heather Creath, has been stake and Cup placed several times and a steady winner at the allowance level. Last year he earned over $32,000.
"I've had the itch to return to race riding the last few years," Richards said, "but this year it just felt right. I've been galloping ten to twelve horses each morning since the track opened but I'll cut back to just those horses I expect to ride in races in the last two weeks before the season starts (April 29). And I'd like to ease into it by riding two or three horses a day to start."
"That could be a problem," declared Paul "JP" Souter, a former Woodbine rider and now the agent for Richards. "From the response I've been getting from trainers, I think she'll have more rides than that to start with."
Souter is in his first year as an agent for other jockeys, but booked his own rides for several years. Still, Richards thinks the two mesh perfectly: "I'm not a people person, I just want to ride. Paul's a people person."
The two, friends for 25 years, were stabled in the same shed row and, related Souter, "When I heard she was hinting about coming back, I told her 'Don't go nowhere else' for an agent. "I don't 'hound' trainers, but I've been getting lots of good response." "People tell me he's doing a good job," Richards added.
Born in England to "non- horsey" parents, Richards' family moved to Canada when she was nine: Her older sister, Julie Vanderwall, had been riding
jumpers in England and Richards has "a picture of me onahorsewhenIwastwo.At14Igotasummerjob at Fort Erie and everything just evolved."
Her love for horses led to her leaving high school before her graduation, and she admits "If I had it to do over, I'd have finished high school, although I have taken some courses since I began working with horses full time. But once I started race riding, I was doing a lot better financially than many of my former classmates who had graduated college."
Richards won Canada's Sovereign Award as leading apprentice in 1989 and, unlike many other Sovereign winners, was based at "the border track;"
CONTINUED PAGE 12 - SEE MAREE
Fort Erie jockey Maree Richards and her agent John Paul Souter
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