After choosing quality over quantity at recent Los Alamitos thoroughbred meets, Juan Hernandez is going for more of both as the Orange County track opens a two-week run on Friday.
California’s perennial leading jockey has two mounts on Friday, including 9-5 morning-line favorite Voldemort in the allowance-level feature race, and two on Saturday, 8-5 favorite Nimah in the $200,000, Grade II Starlet Stakes and 2-1 favorite Greenwich Village debuting in a maiden sprint.
That’s just the start.
“This meet I think I’m going to be there pretty much every day,” Hernandez said on the phone Thursday. “That way I keep the feeling of the horses and keep myself fit. (In the past) when I’m off for a week, when I come back I feel like I have to start over.”
Hernandez, 33, is coming off a rare disappointing meet at Del Mar. It began Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 with three second-place finishes in his bid for a career-first Breeders’ Cup victory. Although he won Grade III stakes with Nevada Beach in the Native Diver and Hope Road in the Bayakoa, he finished sixth in wins with nine (15%), far behind champion Umberto Rispoli’s 17 (22%).
“To be honest with you, I did some soft rides,” Hernandez said of his performance at the monthlong Del Mar meet. “That was all on me. I should do better than I did.”
Los Al should get Hernandez back in form.
At the three short thoroughbred meets that the circuit’s top jockeys generally view as breaks from the intensity of Santa Anita and Del Mar, Hernandez has ridden sparingly but won with seven of 14 mounts over the past year (rewarding his fans with a 16% profit on flat win bets). That includes an active streak of five stakes in a row with Tenma (in the 2024 Starlet), Sweet Azteca, Nevada Beach, Kings River Knight and Nothing Like You. It helps to ride a lot for trainer Bob Baffert, who will seek his ninth consecutive Starlet win with Nimah, Himika (Tyler Baze up) and Consequent (Kazushi Kimura).
“She’s (Nimah) a smart filly,” said Hernandez, who rode the 2-year-old daughter of Gun Runner to a front-running sprint win in her debut at Del Mar. “She has talent. Now we need to show we can go two turns with her.”
Hernandez is waiting to see which 2-year-old colt he’ll ride for Baffert in the Dec. 13 Los Alamitos Futurity, the $200,000, Grade II highlight of the meet.
“I hope we can keep up the momentum and the high percentage of winning (at Los Al),” Hernandez said. “Hopefully we can do even better (this time).”
The meet runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week and next, with first post at 12:30 each afternoon.
Quarter-horse and thoroughbred racing continues at night, with first post at 5:45 p.m. on Saturday and 6:45 p.m. on Sunday.
CHANGE IS WARRANTED
The aftermath of an inquiry into the stretch run of the Cecil B. DeMille Stakes at Del Mar on Sunday was the latest example of the need for better explanations of stewards’ decisions.
First-place Unrivaled Time and jockey Diego Herrera shifted out and bothered third-place Hey Nay Nay and Flavien Prat as Iriseach and Umberto Rispoli got up for second. After the stewards watched replays and ordered no change in the result, track announcer Larry Collmus explained that they decided the incident “did not warrant a disqualification.” But that’s just a restatement of what fans knew already, since there was no disqualification.
FanDuel TV’s Christina Blacker went to the stewards’ booth and got proper explanations on camera for why the three officials conducted the inquiry and what they decided. Kim Sawyer and Luis Jauregui, who voted for no change, said Ney Nay Nay shared the blame by lugging in and the incident occurred too close to the finish to make a difference. Grant Baker, who voted for Unrivaled Time to be DQ’d, said he thought Unrivaled Time did contribute to Hey Nay Nay losing second place.
TV crews can’t be expected to do reporting like that after every inquiry or objection, and stewards have long resisted calls for them to go on microphone to announce and explain decisions like officials in other sports. Newspapers’ daily racing coverage has been cut back so much that writers can’t often ask those questions as we used to.
But with so much on the line, more complete explanations on microphone or in writing would be good for everyone.
NECK AND NECK
With less than a month to go, the race to be North America’s top-earning jockey is unusually close, with Irad Ortiz Jr. at $39,117,630 and Flavien Prat at $38,240,108 through Wednesday.
Prat led in earnings for the first time in 2024 – on his way to his first Eclipse Award as the nation’s outstanding jockey – after Ortiz led five of the previous six years.
Neither man will threaten the records Prat set in 2024 for stakes wins (82) and graded-stakes wins (56). Prat’s victory aboard Segesta in the Grade I Matriarch Stakes at Del Mar on Sunday padded his 2025 leads over Ortiz in both categories, 68-62 in stakes and 42-34 in graded stakes.
Among trainers, Brad Cox is closing in on his third earnings title in five years, starting the final month with a healthy lead over Chad Brown, who won the other two years.
148 DAYS TO THE DERBY
Last week’s round of future betting on the May 2, 2026, Kentucky Derby left Todd Pletcher-trained Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Ted Noffey the 7-1 favorite, while Cox’s Further Ado dropped to 13-1 after winning the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs on Saturday. Baffert has two of the public’s top six choices in 22-1 Boyd, the Ed Brown Stakes winner at Churchill, and 25-1 Brant, the Del Mar Futurity winner.
Chad Brown-trained Paladin (Prat riding), a $1.9 million son of Gun Runner who’s 22-1 in the future betting, is the 3-1 favorite for a 1⅛-mile test in Saturday’s $250,000, Grade II Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct. Second on the morning line is Pletcher’s Courting (John Velazquez), a $5 million son of Curlin who’s 45-1 in the future odds.
SAFETY WATCH
No deaths were reported in racing or training at Southern California tracks in the nine days after the unusually horrible night when three quarter horses died from injuries in three separate races at Los Alamitos on Nov. 23.
But one horse, the unraced 2-year-old filly Clemson Cutie, died at Santa Anita on Monday in what the CHRB’s listing attributed to a non-musculoskeletal cause in “other” activity, not racing or training. An exact cause is to be determined, but common reasons for non-musculoskeletal deaths include gastrointestinal illness and “sudden death” cardiac incidents.
The 33 deaths in racing and training at the three Southern California tracks from the start of the California racing season Dec. 26, 2024, through Monday are in line with totals for recent years, by unofficial count based on CHRB data. The 21 deaths in “other” activity match the number for the same period a year ago but are are more than in the three years before that.
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.
DEL MAR LEADERS
(Final)
Jockeys / Wins
Umberto Rispoli / 17
Antonio Fresu / 14
Mirco Demuro / 12
Hector Berrios / 11
Armando Ayuso / 11
Juan Hernandez / 9
Tiago Pereira / 7
Edwin Maldonado / 6
Kazushi Kimura / 6
Flavien Prat / 5
Tyler Baze / 5
Trainers / Wins
George Papaprodromou / 11
John Sadler / 9
Bob Baffert / 8
Doug O’Neill / 8
Steve Knapp / 7
Phil D’Amato / 7
Bob Hess Jr. / 5
Leonard Powell / 5
Peter Miller / 4
(Six tied) / 3
UPCOMING STAKES
LOS ALAMITOS DAYTIME MEET
Saturday
• $200,000, Grade II Starlet Stakes, 2-year-old fillies, 1-1/16 miles
Sunday
• $100,000 Soviet Problem Stakes, California-bred 2-year-old fillies, 1 mile
LOS ALAMITOS NIGHTTIME MEET
Sunday
• $50,000 1,000-Yard Winter Championship, mixed-breed 3-year-olds and up, 1,000 yards
• $35,000 1,000-Yard Winter Stakes, mixed-breed fillies and mares, 3 and up, 1,000 yards