BY JIM WELLS
Sometimes he catches himself in mid sentence and has to correct what he just said. Someone might ask, for instance, how long has he been riding horses for a living.
“I’ll say six or seven years,” he said, “and then I’ll catch myself and realize it’s been a lot longer than that.”
Ry Eikleberry was still an apprentice when he arrived at Canterbury Park in 2006 with a couple of dozen races under his belt. He was tall for a 17-year-old rider, 5-foot-9, and created all sorts of speculation about how long he could keep the weight off and stay in the saddle.
He’s still doing it.
Now 29, Eikleberry weighs in at 116 stripped and tacks at 119 pounds. His stomach is as flat as a washboard and his riding breeches hang on his narrow hips. Yet, he feels strong and backs it up on the racetrack, riding with authority and aplomb.
How does he keep the weight off and his strength up ?
Discipline. Lots of it.
And a wife, Jilique, who knows how to cook nutritious meals, packed with protein but low on calories and fat.
Yet, “it’s not always easy,” he said.
Modern science helps him keep the weight down and his strength up, and Australian tack helps keep a few pounds off the scale, too.
Eikleberry has been buying his saddles and riding gear from Hyland Sports, an Aussie company, and sometimes sets up sales to other riders looking to shed additional pounds from the tack side of the weight equation.
“Here, feel this boot,” he said, offering one of his patent leather riding boots. Light, with a sole as thin as a bedroom slipper. “I like them. I can really feel the irons,” he said, pointing out that the lightweight footwear has more than a single benefit.
There is more.
His saddle has a plastic tree as opposed to a metal one, and the girth is a single layer rather than two or more. “I can save one or two pounds with the saddle alone,” he said.
Even his breeches are lightweight, translucent they are so thin. “Don’t you get cold with those. You can see right through them,” a rider said to Eikleberry Friday night.
“Naw,” he responded. “We’re exercising out there. Moving around.”
Eikleberry has always done well at Canterbury Park. He won the thoroughbred riding title in 2014 and won three consecutive quarter horse riding titles starting in 2008.
“You wonder why he would even leave here,” said Andrew Offerman, director of racing. “All he does here is print money.”
The comment, repeated to Eikleberry, drew a roll of the eyes, a grin and a laugh. “Yeah, we all know about that, don’t we,” he said.
There were various reasons Eikleberry missed certain Canterbury meets since his bug days. Originally, he wanted to give the California circuit a chance, but found it daunting to break into that market. He didn’t care for the hectic lifestyle there, either.
He has ridden at numerous meets throughout the Southwest. He and his family have a home at the base of the Organ Mountains in Las Cruces, N.M., 45 minutes from Sunland Race Track.
And they are right at home in Minnesota, too. Jilique’s family is from Jordan.
And Ry has been feeling right at home at Canterbury. He rode two winners on Friday’s card and leads the rider standings with six winners.
The printing press, for now anyway, is active
