Santa Anita Barber Proves She Can Cut It

The approximately 2,000 horses in the stable area at are pretty well cared for. There are people who feed them, bathe them, exercise them, walk them, saddle them, bandage their legs, apply liniment to sore muscles, shovel their manure and make their straw beds.

These people are called backstretch workers because at most racing facilities, the stable area is located behind the backstretch. But at Santa Anita, the stable area is adjacent to the far turn on the west end.

Backstretch workers generally consist of hot walkers, exercise riders, assistant trainers and grooms. Among the duties of a groom is to make sure the horses look good.

But who grooms the backstretch workers?

At Santa Anita, that person is Chris Aplin, the track’s barber. Bet you didn’t know that Santa Anita has its own barber. Her shop, which is inside a trailer, is hidden away just outside the stable area.

She also has a shop at the Del Mar racetrack, but it is right out front for all to see.

“People are often surprised to see that there is a barbershop at a racetrack,” she said. “I’d like to have a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say, ‘Hey look, there’s a barbershop.’ ”

She said her barbershops are open to the public, although it is hard to find the one at Santa Anita.

“That’s okay,” she said. “There are plenty of people who know how to find me.”

There are some 900 backstretch workers at Santa Anita, most of whom live in the 450 tack rooms in the stable area. But Aplin not only services the backstretch workers but also trainers, owners, jockeys, Santa Anita employees and others associated with horse racing.”

Being a racetrack barber is not exactly what Chris Aplin set out to become. She is college educated, having majored in kinesiology at Cal State Hayward in the Bay Area. Her plan was to become a gymnastics instructor. She competed in gymnasts but not until she was 16.

"By the time I got into it, I was too old to go very far as a competitor,” she said.

In 1976, at the age of 25, Aplin was introduced to thoroughbreds by a trainer named Jack Etherton at Bay Meadows racetrack in Northern California. She discovered she loved galloping horses and ended up becoming an exercise rider. And that led to her getting to do some traveling. Three times she got to go to the famed Saratoga racetrack in upstate New York.

Most exercise riders at some point aspire to become jockeys. Aplin said that was not the case with her.

“You have to have a certain type of personality to be a jockey,” she said. “For one thing, you have to be extremely competitive.”

Besides Etherton, the trainers she rode for included Ross Fenstermaker, Fred Hooper and the legendary Laz Barrera, whose stable included the great horse Affirmed. In 1978, Affirmed became the last horse to win horse racing’s Triple Crown – the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont.

No, Aplin was never Affirmed’s exercise rider. The great horses have their own exercise riders. In Affirmed’s case, it was Jose “Tuto” Ethier.

Steve Cauthen was Affirmed’s jockey when he won the Triple Crown in 1978, but Cauthen went into a slump, losing four straight on Affirmed. So Barrera chose to have Laffit Pincay ride the horse in the 1979 Hollywood Gold Cup at Hollywood Park.

Aplin remembers that Pincay, as many jockeys do before a big race, came out one morning to work Affirmed.

“The horse would not gallop,” Aplin said. “Tuto then had to do it. Barrera was against using a whip, so Tuto got a child’s stick from the gift shop, which Laz couldn’t see. Affirmed was a very laid-back horse who would only saunter around the track. That child’s stick was Tuto’s little secret.”

Aplin has been privvy to many such secrets over the years in her dual role as a racetrack barber and exercise rider.

While working as an exercise rider, Aplin got her barber’s license in 1980 so she could cut hair to supplement her income. Her career as an exercise rider ended in 2009 because of an injury, so she is now a full-time barber and still enjoys the exchanges with her customers.

“While they are sitting in that chair, people will tell you things they wouldn’t tell anyone else,” she said.

“You just never know what to expect,” Aplin said.

One day at Del Mar, a man came into her shop and asked her to lock the door.

“He pulled out something like $30,000 in cash from his pocket,” Aplin said. “He had won a Pick Six with a $12 ticket and, for $6, had sold half the ticket to a parking attendant. He told me he needed a safe place to count out the money so he’d know how much to give the parking attendant. I thought, ‘Boy, that’s going to be one happy parking attendant.’ ”

It was just another day in the life of a racetrack barber.