Juan Hernandez is back! Del Mar this week to look for a hat trick. If he wins the equestrian title at the Bing Crosby Meet it will be his third consecutive equestrian title at the seaside track. He ran away with the jockey’s race this past summer and won his first local equestrian title last fall.
Hernandez also won Santa Anita the winter/spring meetup championship earlier this year and is in the mix until the last day of Santa Anita’s fall meet, so he’s been on a hot circuit for the past 12 months and brought back much momentum for Bing Crosby Meet, which begins its ninth season November 11
Similar to the summer meetup in Del Mar, Hernandez will have a bunch of new top drivers to deal with this fall. Flavien Prat and John Velasquez both said they plan to ride during the Bing Crosby meetup. That’s in addition to the top riders that often return to Del Mar: Umberto Rispoli, Abel Cedillo, fall Santa Anita Park meets equestrian champion Ramon Vasquez, Hector Berrios, and the resurgent Edwin Maldonado. Not to mention Mike Smith, Joe Bravo, Victor Espinoza, Mario Gutierrez and Kyle Frey.
“I don’t mind,” Hernandez said. “I like competition. I like going with those men because you can learn a lot from them and it’s a good experience to be with them. That’s why I’m here. Since then As a bug boy in Mexico, I wanted to come here and ride with the best riders in the world.”
Hernandez beat Prat by three wins in the 2021 Del Mar races, raking in more than $1.1 million in earnings without the backing of a Breeders’ Cup wallet that tends to boost one’s earnings. number of horse racers at the meeting last fall. He finished third on Mackinnon in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf (G1T), but otherwise all of his winnings came from the races he entered in the regular part of the meeting. He finished with 17 wins from 79 starts, with 13 seconds and 11 thirds.
Hernandez reported that his agent Craig O’Bryan told him he had “some good horses” to ride this encounter.
“I like Del Mar,” said the driver. “The track is beautiful. I like the surface, the grass and the dirt. The only thing is to drive back and forth.”
Unlike in the summer, when drivers and coaches live in the San Diego area during the meeting, most of them travel from LA for the fall meeting. Hernandez said he will drive down to Del Mar on Fridays and back on Sunday to Los Angeles, where he works horses at Santa Anita during the week. It is this dedication that has made Hernandez beloved by many of the top coaches in Southern California and earned him several mounts at this year’s Breeders’ Cup.
“It’s really good,” Hernandez said. “We have a second and my horse runs fine.”
Hernandez finished second on Cave Rock in the FanDuel Breeders’ Juvenile Cup presented by the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (G1), his best attempt in the Breeders’ Cup since finishing second on board the ship. Anneau d’Or arrive Storm the Court in Juvenile 2019 in Santa Anita. His three other Breeders’ Cup mounts over the past week have been removed from place.
“We’ve been doing really well in Del Mar over the last few meetings, and hopefully we can continue,” Hernandez noted.
This press release has been edited for content and style by the BloodHorse Staff.
