Jones a one-man band training Oaks fillies

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Even after all these years, the sight of trainer Larry Jones galloping a horse arrests the eye.

His long legs extended well below his mount’s barrel thanks to stirrups let down lower than any other exercise rider on the track, Jones, nearly twice the heft of a jockey, cuts a striking figure.

He stands out even more starkly when the beast beneath him is a horse of exceptional talent, which was the case Tuesday. The first rider onto the freshly groomed Churchill Downs surface, Jones popped out of the three-quarters gap and onto the backstretch aboard I’m a Chatterbox, who might be favored Friday in the Kentucky Oaks.

Jones doesn’t believe in standing his horses before training, and on Tuesday, he pushed I’m a Chatterbox right off into a jog, disappeared into the sunlight down the backstretch, and came back around the clubhouse turn at a gallop. He pulled up I’m a Chatterbox, wheeling her, and quickly headed back to his barn.

The session was accomplished with utmost efficiency for good reason: During the 15-minute window of training time restricted to Kentucky Derby and Oaks starters, Jones was the only guy in the house with two to ride.

Back at his stables, he climbed up on his bucket – Jones doesn’t believe in getting legged up onto a horse because he thinks it’s hard on the animal’s back and on his knees – and swung a leg over Lovely Maria, Kentucky Oaks entrant No. 2. Out through the gap they came. They jogged down the backstretch, galloped a mile, pulled up, went back to the barn. And that was it. The rest of Jones’s 30-horse string is 70-odd miles away at Keeneland. So are the rest of his exercise riders.

“It’s just me, and hopefully I don’t fall off the first one, because if I do, I don’t know who’s going to get on the second one,” Jones said.

It’s been almost a year since Jones actually did fall. Bucked to the ground by a rampaging 2-year-old, he had bleeding on the brain, broken ribs, a broken wrist, a bruised lung, and a torn ear for good measure. Less than three months later, he was on horseback again.

Jones seems like his old self. And he is back to his old tricks, sending live horses into the Oaks, which Jones won with Proud Spell in 2008 and Believe You Can in 2012. I’m a Chatterbox swept the three Fair Grounds stakes in her division, winning the Fair Grounds Oaks and beating Lovely Maria in the Rachel Alexandra. But I’m a Chatterbox hasn’t run as well at Churchill, and Jones wondered how much she got out of her Sunday work. Lovely Maria, though, worked exceptionally well, Jones said, and “is dead on target to run her best race.”

Second out during training Tuesday, Lovely Maria might be first home in Friday’s big race.