Mario Pino returning to ride at Delaware Park, 39 years after start

More than 40 years ago, Mario Pino looked out a classroom window on the top floor at St. Mark’s High School and saw his future.

“If you were in a certain room, you could look out and see right to the racetrack at Delaware Park,” he said.

He left school early and never looked back. The Wilmington native led the jockey standings at Delaware Park in 1979 and ’80, then moved on to a brilliant 30-plus-year career in Maryland.

He is still riding at the age of 56, and when Delaware Park’s 81-day live racing meet begins at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, Pino will be back where it all began for him.

“It will be a nice change for me, getting back to where I was born,” Pino said. “I always loved racing in Delaware. My family is there ... It’s a new challenge for me.”

He is chasing a milestone of 7,000 career wins, a feat only accomplished by eight other jockeys in North America. Pino had 6,861 victories through Monday, leaving him 139 to go.

“I’d love to get that,” he said.

But more than anything, at an age when 99 percent of those in his profession have long been retired from competing in a physical, dangerous sport, he is still following his passion.

“Some people would say you’re older now, why keep on going?” Pino said. “But I love what I’m doing. If I’m young at mind and heart and physically fine, why shouldn’t I do what I love to do?”

Getting started

Pino was 14 years old when he went to Delaware Park for the first time. He watched the morning workouts and was hooked.

“I was like, ‘Wow, I would love to do this,’ ” he said. “This is me. I’d been around horses all my life, riding them, but not racehorses. When I saw the racehorse part of it, I said, ‘Wow, I can really do this.’

“I like something physical, and I like to be outside. So it was the perfect fit for me to be a jockey.”

His family owned show horses in nearby West Grove, Pennsylvania, a background that gave him a head start. His two brothers have also been involved in racing for years, Mark as a blacksmith at the Fair Hill Training Center just across the state line in Maryland and Michael as a trainer now based in Oxford, Pennsylvania.

“It wasn’t a big change for me to be around horses,” Pino said. “It wasn’t like I was scared. Racehorses are different, they’re a little more high strung. But you just adjust.”

He spent more than a year working to learn every facet of the business from experienced horsemen before finishing sixth in the first race of his career, aboard Sea of Fortune on Nov. 4, 1977, at Penn National Race Course in Grantville, Pennsylvania.

It took more than a year to earn his first win, aboard Ed’s Desire on Jan. 16, 1979, at the long-closed Bowie Race Track in Bowie, Maryland. He won two more races the next day and was off and running.

His first winner at Delaware Park came that summer, on July 4, aboard Mesa Warrant in the seventh race. He won again two races later and went on to lead the jockey standings for two seasons.

“At the time, racing was really big in Delaware,” Pino said. “There were some really good horses and horsemen. Not that there isn’t now, but it was big then. And to be leading rider there was a big deal.”

He rode some of the greatest horses of the era, including Jameela, one of the best Maryland-bred mares ever, who won 27 of her 58 career starts and earned more than $1 million, an astronomical sum at the time.

“I only rode her one time, but I won on her,” Pino said. “You could say to ride her was like a feather in your cap.”

The big time

Racing at Delaware Park began to decline, so Pino moved to Maryland and established himself as one of the top riders at Pimlico, Laurel and other Mid-Atlantic track. He continued to live in Maryland but came back to race at Delaware Park from 2004 to 2007, when, fueled by slot-machine revenues, the Stanton oval became the highest-paying track in the region.

“I wanted to get back to Delaware because the racing was getting pretty prime time,” Pino said. “You had some really good horses and trainers, so I migrated back there. That’s where I picked up with (trainer) Larry Jones and some good horses to ride.”

He rode Wildcat Bettie B and Diabolical to graded-stakes victories at Saratoga, but the best of the bunch was Hard Spun.

Owned by Rick Porter’s Fox Hill Farms and trained by Jones, the colt took Pino on a magical ride across the country in 2007. It started the previous fall, when Hard Spun won his career debut by 8¾ lengths at Delaware Park, and followed with a 5-length win in the Port Penn Stakes.

“He was an incredible horse,” Pino said. “You knew you were sitting on something. … I didn’t want to be the reason he lost. He was one of the best horses I ever rode.”

In January of his 3-year-old season, Pino rode Hard Spun to an easy victory at Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans. His first loss came in a surprising fourth-place finish the following month at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but Hard Spun quickly regrouped and in March, Pino guided him to victory in the Lane’s End Stakes at Turfway Park in Florence, Kentucky.

His next start came in the 2007 Kentucky Derby, the first time in America’s most prestigious race for the veteran jockey, trainer and owner. And for most of the 1 ¼-mile race, it was looking good.

“He led all the way. Actually, I thought I was going to win at the top of the stretch, because I still had a little horse" left, Pino said. “But Street Sense loved the racetrack, and Calvin (Borel) gave him a great ride to get through on the fence all the way.

“If Calvin had to go around seven or eight horses and circle the field, I might have won. But he got through 20 horses, so I guess it was meant to be. It’s hard to get through a 20-horse field, but he did. He only went around one horse, and that was me.”

Street Sense rallied from 18th place to win by 2¼ lengths, with Hard Spun second. Pino went on to ride Hard Spun to third in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Baltimore and second in the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, New Jersey. He then won the prestigious King’s Bishop Stakes at Saratoga, New York, and beat Street Sense in the Kentucky Cup Classic at Turfway before finishing second to the famed Curlin in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Monmouth.

Porter and Jones would return to the Kentucky Derby with other horses, but it turned out to be Pino’s only shot at the sport’s biggest prize at Churchill Downs.

“It was a good experience,” Pino said. “I loved every minute of it, to ride him there. To almost win, it was great. No regrets.”

He didn’t get another chance because he didn’t want to move to where the sport’s best horses and trainers are located.

“If you’re not riding in New York or Kentucky or California, you’re not going to pick up those kinds of horses,” Pino said. “Because they usually come out of those areas, and I wasn’t there. That’s why I never got on another horse of that caliber.

“I always came back to Maryland because my family was there. I have three girls, raised them all there. My wife and I lived in Maryland for 30 years, and I rode there. That was my home, and it was good.”

Shifting gears

Pino stopped riding regularly at Delaware Park after the 2007 season. The past five years, he has spent most of the spring and summer as one of the leading riders at Presque Isle Downs near Erie, Pennsylvania. But he wanted to get closer to home.

“When I was at Presque Isle, I was secluded,” he said. “When you’re up there, you’re up there. It’s hard to get back and forth.”

So now he has rented an apartment in Bear, eight miles from Delaware Park and close to the major highways that offer easy access to other tracks in the region.

Delaware Park will offer live racing on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays through Oct. 20. Pino plans to be there most of those days, but will also ride at tracks in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

That’s because he is selective. At this point in his career, Pino mostly limits himself to the races that pay more money.

“They look for him on the better horses, stakes and allowance races and grass races,” said Irwin Steinberg, the agent who represented Pino during his last stint at Delaware Park and will do so again this year. “He’s not looking to ride seven or eight a day. He’s looking to ride two, three, maybe four.”

Pino spends most of the winter months in Florida, but rarely rides there. Coming into Tuesday he had only 19 starts this year, with five winners. But he is ramping up now, as he rode two races at Pimlico on Saturday, three at Monmouth on Sunday, one at Pimlico on Monday and one at Parx Racing near Philadelphia on Tuesday.

He is scheduled to ride twice during Delaware Park’s opening day on Wednesday — on Political Farce in the fifth race and aboard Screen Image in the seventh race. Screen Image is trained by Racing Hall of Fame member Jonathan Sheppard, who has teamed with Pino for countless winners over the years.

“His style of riding suits a lot of my horses,” Sheppard said. “My style of training is to have horses maybe not that fast in the beginning of the race, but finish strongly. That’s sort of his natural style, too.”

It wasn’t always that way. But now, Pino has the experience of riding in more than 41,000 races.

“I’m a patient rider. I adjust to the horse,” he said. “If he’s got to be out there (on the lead), I’ll get him out there. But when you’ve been riding for years, you become more patient. You kind of know when to move and when not to move.”

Staying in shape

That experience also helps him get back in the groove quickly when he resumes riding each spring.

“It’s amazing how he barely rides races all winter the last few years, and he comes right out in the spring like he never was away from it,” Sheppard said.

Taking time off has been one of the keys to his longevity. Constant maintenance has helped, too.

“Just dedication. Being physically fit and staying busy,” Pino said. “I love the sport, and that’s what motivated me to keep my weight down. It’s not easy.

“I gain a few pounds. I get heavier. Because if you’re not riding, you gain weight,” he added. “But not a lot. I keep an eye on it, and when I get back I give myself a couple of weeks and I get back down to my riding weight.”

He said he feels and looks younger, and his agent agrees.

“He takes very, very good care of himself,” Steinberg said. “He works out all the time, he keeps his weight, he looks like he’s 40.”

Exercise, stretching, yoga and weight lifting all have helped him stay in the game. He has overcome broken collarbones, a fractured back, a fractured skull and several other injuries.

“You’re going to get hurt. It’s just part of the game,” Pino said. “But when I got injured, I came back quick. I healed fast. But if you ride for years and years, you’re going to get hurt.”

“He’s a survivor,” Sheppard said. “This can be a dangerous profession at times, and he’s still out there doing it. He knows how to take care of himself pretty well.”

A big number

But how much longer will Pino ride? It’s a question he has been asked the last 15 years, and he keeps going.

“The day I don’t miss riding, that’s when I’ll retire,” he said. “I still like it. I miss it when I’m not doing it, and it makes me come back. To be this close to 7,000 wins, I’d be foolish not to try to get it.”

That number serves as motivation. He has won more than 200 races in 11 different years, including a career-high 297 in 2001. But now, with his scaled-back schedule, he has averaged only 77 wins per year since 2010. At that rate, the big milestone is a couple of years away.

“I like to win. Whether it’s a cheap race or a big race, it doesn’t matter to me. Winning is winning,” Pino said. “I just love to cross the wire first. My main goal in life right now is to try to get 7,000 winners.

“Did I ever think I’d ever win 7,000 in my career? I never thought I’d win 6,000. I never thought I’d win 5,000. And now to be closing on 7,000, that would be history.”

With some luck, sometime next year he may hit the mark at the track he used to see out the window at St. Mark’s High.

“When I come to Delaware, I feel like it’s my home,” Pino said. “Even though I rode in Maryland for 30 years and had some great achievements there, I’ve got a lot of great memories riding in Delaware.”

He hopes to make some more, starting Wednesday.

Contact Brad Myers at bmyers@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @BradMyersTNJ