DEL MAR — There will be fresh jockey and trainer faces around the track on Friday afternoon as the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club opens its 87th season of racing.
Three-time Del Mar riding champion Joel Rosario is among five notable additions to the jockey colony. He is joined by Emissael Jaramillo, Florent Geroux, Julien Leparoux and Joe Bravo, another Del Mar returnee.
A year after adding a number of Northern California trainers when California consolidated into a single, Southern California circuit, Del Mar again expands its trainer lineup with the addition of Jose D’Angelo, Brian Lynch, Sam Wilensky and Vann Belvoir.
Perhaps the most noticeable change to Del Mar enthusiasts will be in the schedule.
The season will have 32 racing dates over eight weeks, with the premier race of the meeting – the $1 million Pacific Classic – being advanced by a week to Aug. 22.
This year’s meeting ends on Labor Day; for the past several years, the summer meeting had ended the week after the holiday weekend.
“We’re excited about how everything is unfolding,” Josh Rubinstein, the president of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, said earlier this week.
Friday’s 11-race card features the traditional opening day Oceanside Handicap, a $150,000 test for 3-year-olds on Del Mar’s turf course – the first of 37 stakes races during the summer meeting.
But Saturday features two Grade II stakes – the $300,000 San Diego Handicap and the $200,000 San Clemente Handicap for 3-year-old fillies.
The San Diego Handicap has drawn two notable entries in Journalism and Full Serrano, plus the Bob Baffert-trained Mirahmadi.
Trained by Michael McCarthy and ridden by Umberto Rispoli, Journalism won the 2025 Santa Anita Derby, Preakness and Haskell Stakes and ran second to Soverneignty in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. Full Serrano won the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile after running second in the Pacific Classic. Rosario will be aboard the John Sadler-trained Full Serrano Saturday.
Del Mar is hoping the San Diego Handicap will be a springboard to a strong field for the Pacific Classic with other such notable horses as Nysos and Fingers – the winner of the first two legs of Japan’s Triple Crown – also mentioned as entries.
Rosario returns to Del Mar, where he won three straight jockey titles (2009-2011) before heading east. He scored four of his 16 Breeders’ Cup wins at Del Mar and won two Pacific Classics (Dullahan in 2012 and Accelerate in 2018). He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2024.
France’s Leparoux has over 3,000 wins and two Eclipse Awards in a career that included a previous stop at Del Mar in 2003. Geroux, who has more than 2,300 wins in a 20-year career, will be a Del Mar regular for the first time, although he won the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Classic aboard Gun Runner in 2017.
Jaramillo and Bravo have been riding in Florida.
Jaramillo moved to Southern California at the beginning of the year and won the jockey title during Santa Anita’s Classic Meeting. The former Florida champion rider won six stakes races during the recently completed Hollywood Park meeting at Santa Anita.
Bravo has spent the past two years riding in South Florida. Bravo previously won 22 titles at Monmouth Park and the Meadowlands before first coming to Del Mar in 2021.
The five newcomers join a riding colony that includes defending summer meet champion Juan Hernandez, last year’s fall meet champion Rispoli, Hector Berrios, Antonio Fresu and Hall of Famers Mike Smith, Kent Desormeaux and Victor Espinoza.
D’Angelo, the winner of two Breeders’ Cup races last fall, is the most accomplished new trainer at Del Mar. He’s expanding his Florida operations. Kentucky trainer Lynch will bring a string to Del Mar this summer. Wilensky is also from Florida while Belvoir expands from his Arizona base.
Racing secretary David Jerkens said Del Mar will have a capacity crowd of horses on the backstretch. A total of 147 trainers put in requests for 2,608 stalls. But true capacity is closer to 1,800 with many Del Mar entries shipping in daily from San Luis Rey Downs in Bonsall and Los Alamitos in Orange County.
First post times for all race dates this season will be 2 p.m. – until the final weekend of the meeting, when the first post shifts to 1:30 p.m. After the three-day opening weekend, Del Mar will run Thursday through Sunday until the final weekend, with the meeting ending on Labor Day Monday.
Other enhancements:
• Dirt races for 2-year-old maidens will have a minimum $100,000 purse.
• An All-Turf Pick 3 has been added for the last three turf races on each day’s card.