Travis Wales, 35, sees "so much potential" in Arapahoe Park, where the veteran jockey rides before "a great fan base." (David Zalubowski, Special to The Denver Post )

Arapahoe Park's three-time riding champion is a fierce competitor

Aurora, CO. July 7, 2011 - In tiny Selah, in Washington's fertile Yakima Valley, Travis Wales went out for high school football as a sophomore. For a small boy sometimes teased about being part of Selah High's "hick" contingent living outside of town, football was a way to assimilate.

"The only helmet that fit me was from the junior high, and it was black," Wales recalled, sitting in the otherwise deserted Arapahoe Park clubhouse this week. "We were the Vikings, and the helmets were yellow. Mine's black. I kept taking mine off and putting it down. One time, the coaches yelled at me to get in the drill, so I ran out there and caught a pass without my helmet — my odd helmet. So a coach yelled at me again. 'Wales, are you crazy? Put your helmet on!' "

Then, thinking of the movie, "Outlaw Josey Wales," the coach called the little sophomore, "Outlaw Travis Wales."

"I liked it," Wales said. "I was 'Outlaw!' And it stuck."

Now 35, the three-time Arapahoe Park riding champion still accepts the rogue's image. When he guided E F Five, a 4-year-old colt, to a wire-to-wire win in the $40,000 Front Range Stakes on Independence Day, Wales pumped his fist with gusto past the finish line and didn't stop there. He hammed it up for video cameras, grabbed two U.S. flags for winner's circle pictures and raised them as winning owner Linda Robertson held the trophy and laughed at Wales' enthusiasm.

The Colorado horse-racing community is used to Wales' outgoing self-assurance, and it still rubs a few the wrong way. But after nearly a decade of coming to the Aurora track's annual May-to-August meeting, Wales seems to have generally earned that smiling acceptance afforded successful, if quirky athletes: Aw, that's just . . .

Aw, that's just Travis, The Outlaw.

Wales is a cutthroat competitor who can treat cheap claiming races with the seriousness of a stakes race, and he is tough enough to have missed less than a month of riding last year because

Travis Wales, 35, sees "so much potential" in Arapahoe Park, where the veteran jockey rides before "a great fan base." (David Zalubowski, Special to The Denver Post )of a broken collarbone that might have sidelined a baseball player for months.

"I kind of grow on people . . . slowly," Wales said, smiling.

One of those he has won over — mostly — is Arapahoe's leading trainer, Temple Rushton, who gives Wales frequent work.

"He's a great rider," Rushton said. "He's come up through the ranks and he's a 'try-er.' " Rushton laughed.

"But sometimes when he's riding against you, he's a little hard to handle," Rushton said. "Whenever he wins, he gives you that No. 1 sign . . . and I'm behind him. He's a real character sometimes."

"The money's good"

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