Tale of Animosity Unfolds in Jockey Probe

SACRAMENTO â€”  There was animosity between the two jockeys almost from the moment they laid eyes on each other four years ago at Longacres race track in Renton, Wash.

Ron Hansen remembers that he had just arrived from Minnesota and, as luck would have it, a jockeys’ strike was about to begin.

Hansen was on one side of the strike. Doug Schrick was on the other.

Schrick crossed the picket lines the first day and rode a horse that Hansen had been scheduled to race.

“What’s the deal?� Hansen remembers asking Schrick. “I thought we had a strike going.�

“You don’t understand,� he remembers Schrick replying. “I’m broke.�

But nothing in that encounter in July, 1986, prepared the two jockeys for the extraordinary events that came to a head Tuesday morning behind closed doors in a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. There, the California Horse Racing Board reinstated Hansen after he was banned from Golden Gate Fields for alleged race-fixing.

Hansen’s chief accuser was Schrick.

The two had gone their separate ways after the strike. Hansen was moving up quickly through the ranks of thoroughbred jockeys, and the competitive distance between the two grew with each season.

Hansen is Northern California’s leading thoroughbred jockey, earning about $300,000 last year.

Schrick, still broke, is suspended from racing for 10 years and is facing charges in Alameda County of attempting to bribe another jockey at Golden Gate. He spends these days behind bars at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin because he can’t make $300 bail.

About all the two jockeys had in common was Julie Adams.

The young Newport Beach woman said at a racing board hearing last month that she was engaged to Schrick until March, 1988, when she left Schrick for Hansen.

“Well, obviously,� she said, “he’s extremely jealous because I went back and forth between the two, and Doug hated him.�

Schrick made threats, Hansen testified, but he didn’t take them seriously.

“It was a laughing matter--how mad he was with me because I was seeing her--and everybody knew about it,� Hansen said.

In December, two Las Vegas casinos stopped taking Meadows bets, many other Nevada odds makers began curbing bets they would take and reports surfaced that the FBI was investigating “betting irregularities� at Northern California tracks.

On Feb. 4 Ladbroke Racing Corp., Golden Gate’s owner, informed Hansen that he no longer would be allowed access to the track.

The track management cited a rule that allows such action if it has a “rational basis� to think the presence of a person would harm the integrity of racing.

Hansen protested and appealed to the racing board, but the public relations perception was irresistible: Northern California’s winningest jockey has been banned; a major cleanup must be under way.

Schrick fueled the investigation. Racing board investigator Caryn King said she approached him at Santa Rita on Jan. 30 and offered to try to make it easier on him if he cooperated with the race-fixing probe.

King said Schrick fingered Hansen, saying he “controlled� the jockey room at the tracks, had been seen passing money to other jockeys and once introduced Schrick to a person whom he identified as someone who fixes races.

Were investigators aware of the longstanding animosity between Schrick and Hansen?

Attorney James W. Basin, representing Hansen, posed the question to several investigators who repeated Schrick’s accusations, and all said they were not aware of the ill will.

But Adams, herself jilted by Hansen last fall when he met and married another woman, was unequivocal.

Despite lingering feelings of hurt, she said she felt compelled to testify “because I don’t think what Doug is doing is right, and I don’t think it’s right that somebody is being unjustly accused.�

Hansen had his day of appeal Feb. 16 in a Burbank hotel before Benjamin Felton, an attorney and former racing board commissioner who was acting as the agency’s hearing officer.

After meeting for two hours Tuesday, the racing board voted to accept Felton’s recommendation to reinstate Hansen.

“The denial of access imposed by Pacific Racing Assn. and Ladbroke Racing Corp. on petitioner Ronald D. Hansen on Feb. 4, 1990, is hereby terminated effective March 13, 1990,� it said. “Because this case is still pending litigation, there will be no further comments made by the board.�

So Hansen is back in the saddle, unless Golden Gate management, which could not be reached Tuesday, chooses to appeal.

“We certainly consider him totally vindicated,� Basin said.

But victory had a somewhat hollow ring.

“Unfortunately,� Basin said, “just the fact that his name was used in this procedure is going to tarnish his reputation in the eyes of some people regardless of his innocence.�