MARTIN PEDROZA INDUCTED 2009 FAIRPLEX PARK HALL OF FAME
The first time Martin Pedroza saw Fairplex Park, it was in the early 1980s, when he was a young jockey not long removed from his native Panama. "Geez," Pedroza said. "What is this?"
Fairplex was a half-mile oval then, a furlong shorter in circumference than it is now. Years later, Pedroza looks at the tight turns in Pomona and smacks his lips. For more than a decade, it has rained wins for Pedroza at the fair.
Not just rain, but a deluge. In winning or sharing 11 Fairplex riding titles, including 10 outright championships (every year since 1999), Pedroza has won a record 561 races. David Flores, who dominated the jockey standings at the fair in the early 1990s, is second in career Fairplex wins with 327. When Martin Pedroza was named this year as the newest member of the Fairplex Park Hall of Fame, there were no suggestions that anyone stuffed the ballot box.
Pedroza, who turned 44 on July 20, has won more than 3,000 races (No. 3,000 came on opening day in Pomona last year, when he went on to win six more races), and 18 per cent of them have come at Fairplex, despite its abbreviated racing schedule.
A talkative guy with a good sense of humor, Pedroza turns circumspect when asked what's behind his holding Fairplex in his hip pocket since Pete Wilson was governor. Pedroza has plans to keep winning races by the bushel at the fair for a very long time.
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