James Graham rode four winners on the Thursday card at Fair Grounds, opening an eight-win lead, 50-42, over Colby Hernandez in the jockey standings. Reylu Gutierrez is having a strong first season at Fair Grounds with 47 winners through Thursday. Deshawn Parker, with 32 wins, and Emanuel Nieves, who’s ridden 28 winners, also are having notably successful first seasons based in New Orleans. But let’s talk for a minute about the 10th leading rider at Fair Grounds, Jareth Loveberry. Loveberry is 34 but already has 17 years on the job, having started riding young at defunct Great Lakes Downs after growing up on a Michigan farm. The Michigan era was just one phase of a remarkably itinerant riding career. Loveberry has been based at various points in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, and Minnesota. He spent five full seasons at Mountaineer, riding 1,121 races there in 2012 alone. Mountaineer is a gritty kind of track, lower-level racing, somewhat geographically isolated. “I got hurt there a lot,” Loveberry recalled. In 2013, Loveberry, with support from trainers Bill and Joe Martin, moved his tack to Oaklawn Park. That led to several years on the Ark-La-Tex circuit before Loveberry settled into a comfortable summer spot at Canterbury Park. In fall 2019, Loveberry got a call asking if he wanted to come to Chicago. Jose Valdivia, annually leading rider at Arlington, was returning to California and his agent, Steve Leving, was looking for a replacement. What that meant, essentially, was Loveberry would ride first call for trainer Larry Rivelli, who for years had dominated the long Arlington meet. :: Want the best bonus in racing? Get a $250 deposit match, $10 free bet, and free Formulator with DRF Bets. Code: WINNING “They said if I came with Leving, I’d ride everything for Rivelli. I started riding for Rivelli in 2010 when he sent horses to Mountaineer,” Loveberry said. Things went as planned, Loveberry easily winning 2020 and 2021 Arlington riding titles. That situation, with Rivelli a can’t-miss client, was one thing. Coming to Fair Grounds for the first time this past November presented much more challenging circumstances. Loveberry started slowly, then gathered momentum, only recently cracking the top 10 with 27 winners, his strike rate a solid 14 percent. Loveberry has been a boon to bettors who have backed his mounts, which have produced a $2.32 return on investment during the meet. His client base has expanded, Loveberry recently picking up rides here and there for Steve Asmussen, Brad Cox, and Mark Casse. Fair Grounds stakes wins aboard Another Mystery and She Can’t Sing, both trained by Chris Block, helped turn Loveberry’s meet. “It took me a little while to get a feel for the track and the way the other jockeys ride. People see you win a couple stakes, see you out there working every morning. It just takes a while to get the situation right,” Loveberry said. It’s hard to talk about Loveberry without talking about Leving, his agent. “He’s very . . . different,” Loveberry said, choosing the term with care. Talking – that’s one of Leving’s specialties. His brain takes in bits of information like a sparrow furiously pecking seed. It gives Leving pleasure to reproduce that information – voluminously. Much of it is quite useful. Leving was Frank Calabrese’s racing manager when Calabrese ruled the Arlington meetings earlier this century. His first job in racing came in 1970 as an assistant to the late Chicago turf writer Dave Feldman at the Chicago Daily News. Leving has been a bloodstock agent, a racing official, hosted a Chicago racing show on WCIU channel 26 during the mid-1980s. As a 14-year-old working the front counter at his father’s pharmacy on Chicago’s South Side, Leving met a neighborhood bookmaker, Fluky Stokes, who stoked his interest in playing horses. Leving’s first stint as a jockey’s agent came during the early 1980s with a struggling journeyman named Steve Focareto. He represented bigger-name riders later in their career, like Hall of Famer Jorge Velasquez. Leving was Wesley Ward’s final agent. When Ward years later as a trainer began sending his young horses to race overseas, he leaned on Leving’s thorough knowledge of European racing. :: Get Daily Racing Form Past Performances – the exclusive home of Beyer Speed Figures Leving regularly claims, even to Loveberry, he’s not a good agent. Yet Loveberry has prospered this winter. “He works very well with me. We talk a couple times a day. It’s always teamwork when you do well,” Loveberry said. Leving, 69, contracted COVID-19 early in the meet and almost died. Home COVID tests twice came back negative as Leving’s symptoms became so severe he had to be hospitalized. Leving thought it was curtains. “That was very scary. He just got worse and worse. He was out four weeks,” Loveberry said. Leving’s back to himself now. It’s not merely horses upon which he might opine: movies, books, and, especially, his health. Leving says he’s not a hypochondriac. “Everything I have is real. It’s only because I mention these things with some degree of frequency people think that,” he said. Leving and Loveberry, Loveberry and Leving. It just sounds like they were meant to work together. And, somewhat strangely, it’s working for them this winter in New Orleans. ◗ Gabriel Saez, the 34-year-old jockey, returned to race riding Wednesday following a seven-month absence due to a fractured ankle. Saez rode the first winner of his comeback in the first race on Thursday. Saez, whose agent is Liz Morris, told Fair Grounds publicity he plans to ride for a month at Oaklawn following the end of the Fair Grounds meet before moving his tack back to Kentucky. ◗ Trainer Joe Sharp has a front-end threat, Blissful Change, and a closing contender, Inajiffy, in Sunday’s featured eighth race, a female-restricted turf sprint open to second-level allowance horses and $40,000 claimers.