DEL MAR LEADERS
(Through Sunday)
Jockeys / Wins
Umberto Rispoli / 5
Mirco Demuro / 3
Hector Berrios / 3
Juan Hernandez / 3
Antonio Fresu / 3
Irad Ortiz Jr. / 3
Flavien Prat / 3
Trainers / Wins
John Sadler / 4
George Papaprodromou / 3
Jose D’Angelo / 2
Leonard Powell / 2
Doug O’Neill / 2
Bob Baffert / 2
Phil D’Amato / 2
UPCOMING STAKES
SANTA ANITA
Saturday
• $100,000 The Chosen Vron Stakes, California-bred 3-year-olds and up, 7 furlongs
Sunday
• $100,000 Betty Grable Stakes, Cal-bred fillies and mares, 3 and up, 7 furlongs
LOS ALAMITOS
Saturday
• $30,000 Town Policy Handicap, quarter-horse 3-year-olds, 400 yards• $30,000 Justanold Love Handicap, quarter-horse 3-year-old fillies, 400 yards
Sunday
• $926,200, Grade I Los Alamitos Super Derby, quarter-horse 3-year-olds, 400 yards
DOWN THE STRETCH
• Man O Rose goes into Saturday’s The Chosen Vron Stakes at Del Mar trying to stay unbeaten in 2025, with three wins coming in California-bred stakes at all three of the state’s tracks, on dirt and turf, at distances from 6½ furlongs to 1 mile. The 5-year-old gelding ridden by Edwin Maldonado for trainer Jeff Mullins faces 3-year-old Shea Brennan (Armando Ayuso aboard) and five other horses in the 7-furlong The Chosen Vron. Formerly the Cary Grant Stakes, the race was renamed this year to honor The Chosen Vron, the two-time Cal-bred of the year who was retired last winter.
• Sunday’s Los Alamitos Super Derby, California’s richest quarter-horse derby, matches the filly Hott Temptation, fastest qualifier at 19.572 seconds for 400 yards, against Lethal Cowboy 123, who’s 6 for 6 at the Orange County track, and eight others. The winner earns a spot in the Dec. 13 Champion of Champions.
• Sovereignty kept a tight hold on No. 1 In the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s weekly rankings, with 24 of 28 first-place votes cast by media members, after being scratched from Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar because of a fever. Nos. 2, 3 and 4 are Classic 1-2-3 finishers Forever Young, Sierra Leone and Fierceness. California-trained horses in the NTRA’s final rankings of 2025 are No. 5 Nysos, the Dirt Mile winner; No. 6 Journalism, fourth in the Classic; No. 19 Formidable Man, second to Notable Speech in the Mile; No. 20 Splendora, the Filly & Mare Sprint winner; No. 24 Super Corredora, the Juvenile Fillies winner; and No. 25 Baeza, sixth in the Classic.
• After winning with Nysos and Splendora on Saturday at Del Mar, Flavien Prat returned to Aqueduct and rode seven winners Sunday to tie a one-day record for New York Racing Association tracks. He finished second on his other three mounts.
• The three wins by California-based horses in the 14 Breeders’ Cup races matched last year’s three at Del Mar for the state’s best showing since 2018. New York and Ireland also sent three winners each Friday and Saturday. California trainers’ past 12 Breeders’ Cup wins have come on dirt, going back to 2019.
• Good news: Journalism and Baeza, California’s top 3-year-olds, will continue to race at 4, their owners announced. Waiting to hear plans for Sovereignty, the nation’s top 3-year-old.
• Two horses were euthanized after being injured in races during opening week of the Del Mar fall season: The allowance-level 5-year-old mare Esmeray died after a hind-leg fracture in a race Oct. 30, and the Irish stakes-winning 3-year-old filly She’s Quality was put down hours after fracturing her pelvis in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint on Saturday. Twenty-seven horses have died in racing and training, from musculoskeletal and other causes, at Del Mar, Santa Anita and Los Alamitos since the start of the California racing season Dec. 26, according to an unofficial count of fatalities listed on the California Horse Racing Board website. That’s fewer than the average of about 29 deaths at those three tracks in the same period the past four years.
• Jamie Melham rode 8-1 Half Yours to victory in the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday, becoming the second woman to win Australia’s $6.5 million race. The former Jamie Kah married fellow jockey Ben Melham earlier this year. He finished 14th with Smokin’ Romans.
— Kevin Modesti