On the morning earlier than the beginning of the 2021 Breeders’ Cup Championships, North America’s main jockey was cooling his heels within the stewards’ outer workplace at Del Mar ready for the officers to take him to process for a experience in a race yesterday. Joel Rosario, with practically $26 million banked by his mounts to date this yr, had been disqualified from fourth to fifth in an allowance/non-compulsory claimer on the grass value $72,000.
Rosario finally entered the stewards’ internal sanctum and pled his case. The horse, he mentioned, was powerful to regulate, and the bumping with one other horse on the prime of the stretch was the outcome. The stewards, of their knowledge, agreed. North America’s main jockey obtained no days.
It has been like that this season for Rosario. Luck has adopted him coast to coast. The horses landed by his agent, Ron Anderson, have tended to sprout wings at simply the suitable time, inserting this 36-year-old rider in place to win his first nationwide title after greater than a decade of flirtation. May Rosario’s first Eclipse Award comply with? Solely the Breeders’ Cup outcomes will inform.
With Irad Ortiz Jr., respiration down his neck, Rosario wants an enormous weekend at Del Mar to pad his lead going into the ultimate seven weeks of the yr. Rosario has mounts in 12 of the 14 Breeders’ Cup races—Ortiz rides in 11—however his greatest possibilities seem like in two of essentially the most contentious occasions over the two-day program, with Jackie’s Warrior in the $2 million Qatar Racing Sprint (G1) and Knicks Go in the $6 million Longines Classic.
Several of Rosario’s other mounts have decent chances for a good share of the cash. Hard-trying Gufo has moved up a couple of notches in the $4 million Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf (G1T) with the defections of fellow American-based runners Domestic Spending and United . The filly Kimari looks live for Wesley Ward in the $1 million Turf Sprint (G1T). Rosario has landed on the unbeaten Echo Zulu for the first time in the $2 million NetJets’ Juvenile Fillies. And if favored Letruska can be beaten in the $2 million Longines Distaff (G1), there has been a groundswell of opinion that Rosario could do it with Royal Flag . They have come close twice before.
A Del Mar Breeders’ Cup is at all times a homecoming for Rosario. Starting in 2008, the native of the Dominican Republic waged a collection of thrilling summertime battles with Rafael Bejarano. Over a six-year span, Bejarano received three titles and Rosario received three. Then Rosario headed to New York, and Bejarano received 4 extra.
Anderson has had Rosario on a airplane usually this season to take down good-looking pots at locations like Remington Park, Lone Star Park, and Prairie Meadows. In the course of the temporary, ridiculously profitable Kentucky Downs meet in September, Rosario received 17 races, together with three stakes value half 1,000,000 and one value 1,000,000.
Rosario’s assault on the richest doable stakes, coast-to-coast, was a part of a plan that had no assure of success, particularly throughout a yr when publicity to COVID-19 was nonetheless very a lot part of the journey image.
“I’ve been lucky,” Rosario mentioned, sitting on a sofa within the Del Mar racing workplace. “No COVID. I’m vaccinated, and I at all times put on a masks after I journey. I do know lots of jockeys have gotten sick, so I attempt to watch out.”
Rosario prefers to take his possibilities when the cash is down, out on the racetrack. Within the $750,000 Resorts On line casino Sword Dancer Stakes (G1T) at Saratoga Race Course, the rider threaded a few needles coming from final aboard Gufo to spurt clear after which maintain off the shut of Coolmore’s Japan . In the $500,000 Ainsworth Stakes at Kentucky Downs, Rosario clung to the rail aboard Koala Princess , kept her balanced around a rough turn and into the uphill stretch, and then let her roll to a victory that bodes well for their encore in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1T).
Just as there are scores of talent scouts who knew for certain young Pat Mahomes was going to be a star, or that Timothy Chalamet will own the movie business someday, the line for the Rosario bandwagon formed early. In his first season in Northern California, fresh from a fledgling career at El Comandante in Puerto Rico, he began winning races in bushels.
“Vic Stauffer, the track announcer, had his book at the time,” said veteran agent Vince DeGregory. “I got a call from a friend of mine up there named Joe Griffin. He said, ‘There’s a young kid from Santo Domingo up here you ought to be watching.’ I told him I didn’t have any time. I asked Joe, ‘Can he speak English.'”
The answer was only a little, and not very well. But with horses, the kid from Santo Domingo could communicate.
“Joe called me back four days later,” DeGregory said. “He said, ‘Did you see that kid Rosario ride? All he did was win four races today.'”
Rosario also did his homework. DeGregory had already represented such national champions and Hall of Famers as Chris McCarron, Angel Cordero, and Laffit Pincay.
“He showed up down here in his beat-up pickup truck,” DeGregory said. “I told him to park it in the garage. I didn’t want him to be seen in that. I don’t think he even had a license at the time. He lived with me for nine months before I told him it was time for him to get a place of his own so he could have his own life and some privacy.”
Rosario was raw material for an experienced mentor like DeGregory.
“I told him he needed to learn to switch sticks and go left-handed,” Gregory said. “He’d be using his right hand all the time, and when he came to pass another horse in the stretch he’d have to check a few strides to straighten out his horse. I showed him that every time he did that he cost his horse a length, maybe two, and that was making the difference in losing a race. It wasn’t the horse—it was him.
“At one point I got him with Eddie Delahoussaye,” Degregory went on. “Joel wanted to come from behind all the time and get up in the last part. Eddie told him he needed to move sooner and open up, especially with cheaper horses, who’d get brave making the lead. Joel was a good listener, and he wanted to learn.”
Apparently, the learning curve was short. Through Nov. 4, Rosario had won 3,231 races and mount earnings of $257 million. He moved on to other agents, among them Ronnie Ebanks, but DeGregory, who turned 89 in August, looks upon Rosario’s success with pride.
“A lot of jockeys won’t give you any credit,” he said. “I’ll call Joel from time to time, and he’ll always say to me, ‘Papa, what you taught me is the reason where I am now.’ That’s very gratifying.”
It was not too far into Rosario’s rise in the ranks of elite jockeys that he started being compared to Pincay, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975, at age 28. Rosario does not have Pincay’s impressive shoulder span, but he is of similar stature otherwise and possesses that classic Pincay combination of light hands, brute strength, and perfect rhythm.
“I’ve heard that, yes, but I think Joel looks better than me on a horse,” Pincay said. “He is more consistent. Because I had to diet all the time when I was younger, sometimes my legs felt weak, or my head was a little light. That made a difference on how I looked on a horse. Joel doesn’t have to do that, and so he can always be 100%. At least, that’s the way he looks when I watch him.”
Rosario gave his best “aw shucks” expression when told of Pincay’s comments. They have had a few encounters through the years, but their careers never overlapped.
“We don’t really talk about horses,” Rosario said. “We talk about other things—family, food, friends.”
Rosario has four children from two families, all of them under the age of 18.
“I see them when I can,” he said. “But it’s not easy, with so much traveling.”
Rosario had his first rides in Puerto Rico at the end of 2003, while Pincay suffered a career ending neck injury in March of that year, retiring with 9,350 winners. One of those came in the 1986 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita Park aboard Skywalker, who upset champions Precisionist and Turkoman with a sly, front-running experience from Pincay. To that time, Skywalker had by no means received a mile-and-a-quarter race. Rosario was requested if he would be capable of coax 10 furlongs out of the sensible Knicks Go on Saturday within the Traditional.
“He can if he can loosen up,” Rosario mentioned. “And he’ll if I am quiet and drop my palms. Then I can really feel him breathe straightforward.
“However what did you say the title of Laffit’s horse was? Skywalker?” Rosario added. “I believe I am going to have a look at that race.”
