Edwin Maldonado will find himself in the strange position of watching from the sidelines when his best gal, Ruby Nell , runs Jan. 27 in the $500,000 Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf Invitational Stakes (G2T) at Gulfstream Park. The jockey and the Bolt d’Oro filly have been close to unbeatable lately, with three stakes wins in their past four collaborations.
But timing is everything, and the tumble Maldonado took on the morning of Jan. 6 at Santa Anita Park knocked him out of action just long enough to force Richard Mandella’s hand. The trainer has called upon Frankie Dettori, age 53, to sub for the 41-year-old Maldonado.
“I understand, of course,” Maldonado said. “It’s a very important race. I’m not gonna lie, though, it will be hard. I love that filly. I wish them the best, and I hope she takes them wire-to-wire. Speed is her advantage, and Frankie’s a great rider. He’ll get a lot out of her.”
Entries for the Pegasus program were taken last Sunday, but Maldonado did not receive a doctor’s clearance to ride until Monday. With veteran agent Tony Matos on the job, the jock was set to return Friday with six mounts, then four more Saturday, including Two Rivers Over in the San Pasqual Stakes (G2) for the Doug O’Neill stable.
Maldonado talks things over with trainer Richard Mandella
Maldonado was working one for trainer Dan Blacker on that first Saturday of the New Year when the horse stumbled and fell. It was one of those “from out of nowhere” experiences.
“I landed hard on my right shoulder,” Maldonado said. “The horse got up and took off running.”
Maldonado sustained an acromioclavicular joint separation—better known as an AC separation—in which the clavicle separates from the scapula. If it sounds painful, it is. But it is also common among people who lead active lives (there is no known instance of a turf writer suffering an AC separation), and recovery takes only two to four weeks. At 20 days, Maldonado hit that number on the button.
It helps, of course, to be a fit athlete with the body fat percentage of cinderblock. Coming off his best season in a decade, with mount earnings of $5.5 million, Maldonado was off to a banner start to the Santa Anita meet when he hit the dirt, having won with six of 15 mounts. He returned Friday still in the top 10.
“Getting back with Tony Matos was the key, I think,” Maldonado said. “We communicate great. I trust him and have a lot of respect for him. But I don’t have to say much about Tony. If there’s a Hall of Fame for agents, he’d be in it.”
Jockeys represented by Matos have won the Kentucky Derby (G1) six times and could occupy an entire wing of the racing Hall of Fame. Maldonado, with 1,544 wins and counting, fits into that second tier category of veteran journeymen who often need to be reintroduced whenever they latch on to a spotlight horse in a major race, as he did last September when he rode the Cal-bred Ceiling Crusher to victory over eventual Eclipse champion Pretty Mischievous in the Cotillion Stakes (G1) at Parx Racing. Unfortunately, they had no second act. Ceiling Crusher never raced again and went for $750,000 to Katsumi Yoshida at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November sale.
Maldonado has made the most of any number of good rides, including a second-place finish aboard Reneesgotzip in the 2013 running of the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint (G1T). He won back-to-back graded stakes in late 2022 with Defunded and consecutive runnings of the Santa Monica Stakes (G2) on Merneith , both horses trained by Bob Baffert. He hooked up with the Peter Miller sprinter Comma to the Top to win three stakes, including the Los Angeles Handicap (G3). There were three more stakes with the English Channel filly Fahan Mura , including the Robert J. Frankel Stakes (G3T) for Vladimir Cerin.
Maldonado was born in Ohio, then spent most of his youth in his family’s Puerto Rico homeland before returning to the States as a stable hand at Canterbury Park under the care of his uncle, a jockey. Maldonado’s riding career commenced in 2002 at Assiniboia Downs in Manitoba, Canada, wended its way through Texas and Louisiana, and finally landed in California in 2007. Two years later, he won the riding championship at Fairplex Park, then added a major title at Hollywood Park in the summer of 2013 when he tied for the crown with Rafael Bejarano.
The roller coaster took a dip through the teens, but Maldonado persisted. Now, at an age when modern jockeys continue to perform at peak levels, he is hoping to reap the rewards still available on a shrinking California circuit.
“I love what I do,” Maldonado said. “My grandfather was a jockey. My uncle was a jockey. It’s what I wanted to do ever since I was a kid. I like to stay motivated, going out in the mornings and watching the races even if I’m not riding.”
Maldonado, who stands 5-foot-9, shed bad weight control habits a decade ago and now sticks to a tightly controlled diet.
“I was vegan for two years and I felt great, but after a while I felt like I was losing some muscle,” he said. “So I went back to a little meat, chicken once a week, plus a lot of fruits and vegetables, and a lot of almonds. No cow’s milk, and no processed foods. More minerals than vitamins, and I eat a lot of herbs. Mostly I do my own cooking, and if I do go to a restaurant I do pasta and mushrooms.
“After struggling a lot, I learned what to eat, how to eat, and when to eat,” he added. “I don’t eat anything after sundown. Six p.m. and I have a cup of tea and go to bed. I’ve come to a place where I don’t even think about it anymore.”
Monks lead more exciting lives, but that’s the price of longevity. Most riders do not have another career to which they can easily pivot, although Maldonado did take a turn at dramatic acting with a small but effective part in the HBO racing series “Luck,” filmed at Santa Anita. There he was in episode six of the single season, scowling at a stewards’ ruling that did not go his way and slamming the offending apprentice—played by the British actor Tom Payne—against a jocks’ room cubicle with the warning: “That’s one. There’s no two.”
“I was always kind of camera shy,” Maldonado said. “But that broke me out of my shell.”
“Luck” ended after one season before Maldonado could become racing’s cinematic bad boy, which is just as well. Many actors don’t even eat as well as jockeys. Anyway, he’s already got a prime casting call this winter as a nominee for the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, which will be announced in early March.
Then there’s his day job. Maldonado struck quickly to win the first race at Santa Anita on Friday, a turf event for Cal-bred maidens, aboard the Danzing Candy filly Lamporghini . Coming back in the fourth, again on the turf, his mount More Try showed speed into the first turn then promptly bolted to the outside fence. Maldonado hung on stubbornly but was out of the race.
Welcome back, jock.
