Tag: Del Mar Summer

Jockey Edwin Maldonado planned to come to Southern California for a few weeks to ride the 2010 Los Angeles County Fair meet at Fairplex Park in Pomona, then return to Evangeline Downs in Louisiana, where he'd been based for several years.

Three weeks have turned into 12 years.

“A jockey friend, Felipe Valdez, called me and said, 'I've got an agent for you if you want to ride in California,'” Maldonado recalled. “He gave me the agent's name, Vic Lipton, and said I needed to call him right away. I called Vic and told him I would come out but only to ride that Fairplex meet and then I was going back to Louisiana. Vic hung up on me.”

Maldonado called Valdez to tell him what had happened. Valdez told Maldonado to call the agent again and “tell him you're staying in Southern California, even if you're really not.”

Maldonado phoned Lipton again, who said, “'You know, kid, I need a commitment or it won't work.”

Maldonado and Lipton combined to win five races from 44 mounts, then moved down the road to Santa Anita for what was then the Oak Tree Racing Association fall meet, followed by the Hollywood Park December meet that led into the winter-spring racing season at Santa Anita. It wasn't easy breaking into a talented riding colony.

“Those first nine months were very, very hard,” said Maldonado. “You tend to doubt yourself.”

Two years after landing in California, Maldonado registered his first riding title there, unseating perennial kingpin Martin Pedroza as the leading rider at Fairplex. He was co-leading rider with Rafael Bejarano during the 2013 spring-summer meeting at Hollywood Park. He's been a mainstay on the circuit ever since.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, on Dec. 1, 1982, and raised in Puerto Rico, Maldonado has racing in his blood. His grandfather was a jockey in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and an uncle, Manuel Alicea, rode primarily in Ohio and Texas.

“My Mom wanted to be a jockey, but her father wouldn't let her,” Maldonado said. “It must run in the family, because one of my daughters wants to be a jockey. I told her, 'As long as I'm alive, that's not going to happen.'”

Why?

“It's not that easy being a jockey,” he said. “You have to love the horses, but you also have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of things. I couldn't go to my daughter's graduation because I had to ride. It's a way of life. Don't get me wrong. I love what I do and I can't see myself doing something else.”

Maldonado paused, then added, “Except boxing. I love boxing. I took boxing lessons after school when I was 13 or 14, but never did any amateur fights.”

Maldonado's road to becoming a leading jockey in California began with racetrack visits to see his uncle ride at Thistledown near Cleveland, Ohio, where he fell in love with the game. His family then moved to Puerto Rico. “My first language was English, then I forgot it,” he joked.

Maldonado left Puerto Rico at 17 and wound up at Canterbury Park in Minnesota with his uncle. He got a job as a hot-walker. The next year, after a return trip to Puerto Rico, he went to Sam Houston, where his uncle was riding.

“I got a job grooming horses for Ramon Flores,” Maldonado said. “First a couple of ponies, and then two horses. He'd take me to his farm where I started jogging, galloping and breaking babies. Before the year ended, he had me galloping horses as Sam Houston.”

Maldonado then followed his uncle to Assiniboia Downs in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was galloping as many as 20 horses a day and after four months took out his jockey license. Maldonado's first win, according to Equibase, came at Assiniboia aboard Starr's Image on Aug. 13, 2002.

Months later, Flores, who helped Maldonado get started, died in an accident on an icy patch of highway while hauling horses to race at Sunland Park in New Mexico.

Maldonado's first graded stakes win came in 2012 aboard Izzy Rules in the Grade 3 Las Flores Stakes at Santa Anita for trainer Jeff Bonde. The latter was trainer of Maldonado's favorite horse, Distinctiv Passion, a multiple graded stakes winner that Maldonado rode in the 2015 Al Quoz Sprint at Meydan in Dubai.

“I got on that horse since he was a baby,” Maldonado said. “It was a great journey. He took me all the way to Dubai. I got to ride him most of his career.”

Maldonado developed a reputation as a “speed rider,” one who gets his mounts out of the gate and forwardly placed. It's not a moniker he appreciates.

“I personally don't like it when people call me a speed rider or front-runner,” Maldonado said. “A speed rider? What is that? When they label you like that, then they think you're one-dimensional.”
Maldonado blames Lipton, his former agent, for the label. (He's now represented by Tony Matos.)

“Vic had a belief that California tracks favor speed horses,” Maldonado said. “By him calling me a speed rider, he said I'd get more speed horses. I consider myself a strong rider who loves coming off the pace. My favorite race would be a mile on dirt with a come-from-behind horse.”

He doesn't mind his other nickname, “Candyman,” given to him by former Major League Baseball all-star Paul LoDuca when he was a TVG racing analyst. The original Candy Maldonado was an MLB star in the 1980s and '90s.

“I used to tape TVG and was watching one day when I heard Paul say, 'We have Candyman, the Candy Maldonado of horse racing here.' I said, 'Did he just call me Candyman?' So I put that name on my pants.”

Maldonado said he looks forward to the summer meet at Del Mar because it's “like a vacation for us. It just feels like a vacation, so close to the beach, and you really feel the vibe from the people. They're so supportive. I just love it.”

When he isn't riding, Maldonado tends to his garden at his home in Covina, about 12 miles east of Santa Anita.

“I love gardening. I plant flowers, try to grow my own fruits and vegetables,” he said. “This job can be very stressful and doing that relaxes my mind. It's very peaceful.”

He's also a big believer in what is known as the “law of attraction,” after having read Rhonda Byrne's best-seller, “The Secret,” a self-help book published in 2006 focusing on the power of positive thinking. He credits that book for a big part of his success.

“Vic Lipton got me into that,” Maldonado said. “If it wasn't for that book I wouldn't have been leading rider in 2013. It comes down to this: what you think about, you bring about.”

Currently seventh in the Del Mar standings with 10 wins, 11 seconds and 11 thirds from 94 mounts, Maldonado says he is “always shooting for the top.”

The post Del Mar Summer: Jockey Maldonado Feeds Off Positive Vibes appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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John Sadler has had some very good horses throughout his 45-year training career, going back to the speedy roan filly, Melair, who upset Preakness winner Snow Chief in the 1986 Silver Screen Handicap at Hollywood Park. He's saddled the winners of 44 Grade 1 races and his runners have earned in excess of $139 million. Champions Stellar Wind and Accelerate have called his shedrow home.

But none has generated the excitement surrounding the undefeated Flightline.

“I've never had one like this,” Sadler said. “A lot of horses in my career I've had to train them up. This one, we just drive him in the speed lane. He's got tremendous ability.”

A 4-year-old son of Tapit who because of a freak barn accident didn't begin his racing career until April of his sophomore season, Flightline has won his four starts by a combined 43 ½ lengths – all under jockey Flavien Prat. First came a maiden win at Santa Anita in April 2021 that he won by 13 ¼ lengths. That was followed in September by a 12 ¾-length allowance score. He ran away to an 11 ½-length win in the G1 Runhappy Malibu Dec. 26, then was a six-length winner of the G1 Hill'n' Dale Met Mile on Belmont Stakes day at Belmont Park June 11. His Beyer Speed Figures for those races were 105, 114, 118, and 112, respectively.

Next up is the G1 TVG Pacific Classic at Del Mar going a mile and a quarter on Sept. 3. The San Diego county seaside track's premier race – which Sadler has won three of the last four years – will be Flightline's first try around two turns and what his trainer hopes will be a stepping-stone to the G1 Breeders' Cup Classic, to be run Nov. 5 at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky. Sadler won the 2018 Classic at Churchill Downs with Accelerate.

Flightline has been working steadily since July 9, with two half-mile drills followed by five furlongs from the gate in :59.40 on July 30 and a best-of-morning five furlongs in :59.00 on Aug. 6. He'll be on the track at 6:30 PT Saturday morning, Aug. 13,  for his next breeze.

“The next two works are the distance works,” said Sadler. “He'll go six, out a mile on Saturday and then he'll work again next Saturday. Then he'll have one easy work before the Pacific Classic.

“The training has been centered on getting him to relax to go the big distance,” he continued. “Flavien was pretty adamant after the Met Mile. I didn't ask him, but he said, 'John, distance will be this horse's friend.' So it's just about getting him to relax. The one work we did from the gate we just wanted to get him to shut off and sit behind another horse a little bit. We don't want to work him in company too much because it can get him a little excited.”

Unlike his first three wins, Flightline had to overcome some obstacles in the Met Mile.

“He didn't break, he had trouble, and they were race riding him pretty good, which is their job,” said Sadler. “To overcome that so easily in his fourth start shows you how talented he is.”

Flightline was bred in Kentucky by Jane Lyon's Summer Wind Equine, which stayed in as a partner after West Point Thoroughbreds bought the colt for $1 million at the 2019 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Yearling Sale on the recommendation of bloodstock agent David Ingordo. The other partners are Sadler's longtime client, Hronis Racing LLC, along with Siena Farm LLC, and Woodford Racing, the latter a partnership founded by Bill Farish Jr. of Lane's End, which consigned Flightline to the Saratoga sale.

Based on his eye-catching racing performances and a pedigree whose female family traces back to the Phipps Stable's blue-hen mare, Blitey, Flightline is worth $50 million or more as a stallion prospect, sources have estimated. Sadler said no decision has yet been made about whether Flightline will race in 2023 as a 5-year-old.

“A lot of people may presume, because of his value, that it's a done deal,” said Sadler. “Everybody I've talked to in the partnership said we'll evaluate it at the end of the year.”

Sadler indicated Lane's End, which stands several of his former trainees (Accelerate, Catalina Cruiser, Gift Box, and Twirling Candy), has the inside track for when Flightline does go to stud. He said offers from other stallion farms to buy Flightline have been “through the roof.”

Flightline “never hid his talent,” Sadler said, recalling a phone call he received from April Mayberry, who taught the colt his early lessons in Ocala, Fla. “She called the first time she breezed him and said, 'John, I got goosebumps.'”

Horses like Flightline can put considerable pressure on trainers, but Sadler calls it “a good kind of pressure, the kind that makes you want to get up early and get to the barn each morning.”

He describes Flightline as a horse that can be tough to gallop in the morning. “He's a handful to ride, but Juan Leyva, my assistant, rides him and does a beautiful job,” said Sadler.

Winning a fourth Pacific Classic in five years would be a remarkable accomplishment for Sadler, who ranks second all-time in Del Mar stakes victories and second by overall wins at the seaside track. Bob Baffert leads both categories. Sadler has won training titles at Del Mar, Santa Anita, and Hollywood Park. His first Del Mar stakes win came with Olympic Prospect in the 1988 Bing Crosby Handicap.

Sadler's previous Pacific Classic wins came with Accelerate in 2018, Higher Power in 2019, and Tripoli in 2021. Yet when asked about his recent success in the race, he lamented about the “one that got away,” when Twirling Candy lost by a head to Acclamation in the 2011 Pacific Classic.

If Sadler is feeling extra pressure from having a horse like Flightline in his barn, he isn't showing it.

“I'm in a good stage of my career,” said Sadler, who turned 66 years old on July 30. “I'm a veteran now, been through a lot of campaigns and think I'm well equipped to handle the pressure. My stock has gotten better as I've gotten older. I've got some high-powered 2-year-olds this year, some nice horses.”

And then there's Flightline.

“It will be fun to see what happens these next two races,” said Sadler. “Then we'll see about next year.”

The post Del Mar Summer: Sadler’s Life In The Fast Lane With Flightline appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Despite having the largest average field size in years and daily cards sprinkled with longshot winners, there has not been a single ticket Pick 6 winner at Del Mar since the seaside track began its summer meet July 22.

The jackpot for the 20-cent bet has grown steadily for the first nine days of the meet and stands at $608,415 going into Saturday's 11-race card. when there will be a mandatory payout for the Pick 6 – the first of three for the summer stand (the others are Pacific Classic Day on Sept. 3 and closing day, Sept. 11. First post Saturday is 2 p.m. PT.

Saturday's Pick 6 sequence begins with the sixth race, which has a scheduled post time of 4:34 p.m. PT/7:34 ET. (those in the Central and Mountain time zones can do your own math). Four of the six races were oversubscribed at entry time and include also eligibles while the smallest field, with seven runners scheduled to compete, comes in the Grade 1 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes, where Shedaresthedevil ships in to defend her title in the Breeders' Cup Win and You're In Challenge Series race for the Distaff division. At 8-5 on the morning line, the Brad Cox-trained mare will be tough to beat as she seeks her 11th win in her 21st career start.

But is Shedaresthedevil worthy of a single on your Pick 6 wager? Not for my money.

There are four other graded stakes winners in the field who deserve a look: Richard Mandella-trained Soothsay; Phil D'Amato-trained Desert Dawn; Bob Baffert-trained Private Mission; and Marcelo Polanco-trained Argentine-bred Blue Stripe. All are capable on their best day.

Desert Dawn, the only 3-year-old filly in the field, is especially intriguing. An Arizona-bred by Cupid (one of 97 Thoroughbred foals born in the Grand Canyon State in 2019), she was a longshot winner of the G2 Santa Anita Oaks in April, then ran a very solid third behind Secret Oath in the G1 Kentucky Oaks.

Last out in the G2 Summertime Oaks at Santa Anita June 12, Desert Dawn stumbled badly coming out of the No. 1 post and, as track announcer Frank Mirachmadi said “was hopelessly last.” It was a miracle jockey Umberto Rispoli stayed aboard as the filly essentially went to her knees when she took her first two strides from the gate. Desert Dawn was never a factor that day as the 7-10 favorite but has impressed clockers with her recent morning activity.

D'Amato, Desert Dawn's trainer, has been red-hot in the early stages of the meet and sits atop the standings with eight wins from 50 starts. His 16 percent winning percentage would be much higher if he didn't have multiple entries in many of the races he's won.

Papaprodromou Notches First Grade 1

Speaking of hot, trainer George Papaprodromou comes into Saturday's program with four winners from his last 13 starters, including an $85.20 shocker in Friday's finale with the first-time starter Spirit of Makena, a Ghostzapper colt owned and bred by Bruce Chandler. This follows a strong Santa Anita meet where Papaprodromou  was seventh in the trainer standings by wins. He's won more races so far in 2022 than in any previous year he's been training and is about to hit the $2 million mark in earnings for the year – a personal best.

“Papa” is second in the Del Mar trainer standings by money won, with over $500,000 earned by his runners. The native of Cypress (the island nation in the Mediterranean, not the Orange County city where Los Alamitos is located) registered a career first last Saturday when the American Pharoah 5-year-old ridgling American Theorem won the Bing Crosby Stakes under “Del Mar Joe” Bravo, giving the trainer his initial career Grade 1 victory.

Daily Racing Form's Jay Privman described this on Twitter as the “Summer of George.”

The Summer of George @gap_racing continues as debuting Spirit of Makena posts a 40-1 upset in the @DelMarRacing finale under @DraydenV pic.twitter.com/ATAxAznaj1

— Jay Privman (@DRFPrivman) August 6, 2022

The Crosby was a “Win and You're In” Challenge Series race for the Sprint division, and Papaprodromou is now setting his sights on the G2 Pat O'Brien Stakes Aug. 27, also a “Win and You're In” but for the Dirt Mile division.

That American Theorem was the horse to give the 46-year-old Papaprodromou his first Grade 1 was especially meaningful.

American Theorem was purchased privately for Rustin Kretz' Kretz Racing by bloodstock agent Gayle Van Leer for $200,000 after he failed to meet his reserve price and bidding stalled at $190,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. He won his debut in a loaded Del Mar 2-year-old maiden race  in August 2019, then finished second behind Eight Rings in the G1 American Pharoah Stakes next out at Santa Anita.  He raced just once in 2020, finishing unplaced in the G2 Rebel at Oaklawn, then was sidelined with shin problems. After an early-season race in 2021, American Theorem went on the shelf again. When he came back late in the year, Papaprodromou raced him around two turns several times before cutting back to sprint distances, winning the G2 Triple Bend and then taking the Crosby.

On the day of the Triple Bend, Papaprodromou saddled four winners on the nine-race Santa Anita card, another first for the trainer.

“We've loved this horse since day one,” the trainer said. of American Theorem. “We had high hopes for him and then he got hurt. This was my Dad's favorite horse, too. He passed away two years ago.”

His father, Andreas Papaprodromou, was a trainer at the Nicosia Turf Club track in Cypress who came to the U.S. in the late 1990s, initially to look for a stallion to take home, then staying to train a small string of horses in Southern California. George assisted him while also free-lancing as an exercise rider for several years before taking over his father's stable in 2003.

There were some lean years, but things began to improve when Papaprodromou and Kretz teamed up about 10 years ago. Their first winner, Muchos Besos, was a claimer, but they've enjoy graded stakes success with G3 Eddie D. Stakes winner Mr. Roary in 2017 and now with American Theorem.

Kretz, CEO of Scorpion, a Los Angeles-based marketing and advertising technology company, got the racing bug watching Super Saver win the 2010 Kentucky Derby. “I went to that Derby as a fan and fell in love with it,” Kretz said. “I bought my first horse, Westwood Pride, a month later. Kristin Mulhall bought the horse privately and trained her for us and she competed in a Grade 1 but didn't win (2010 Matriarch, finishing fourth).”

Kretz said he now has about 40 horses, including runners at the track and mares, foals, and yearling kept at Mulholland Farm in Kentucky.

“Georgie has such a passion for the game,” Kretz said. “He's excited about the sport and about winning. He's not one of the big-name trainers but he tries his hardest. I like his passion and doing the right thing for his horses.”

Even rival trainers seem to be enjoying Papaprodromou's success, as witnessed by Dan Blacker's Tweet following the Bing Crosby.

Massive congratulations to @papaprodromou. Great trainer and the best human being. So happy for you mate. Watch to the end… https://t.co/IA36WZHoGt

— Dan Blacker (@dan_blacker) July 31, 2022

Kretz credits Papaprodromou for his patience with American Theorem and for the decision to cut back to sprint distances.

“The first time he ran in 2019, we brought 30 or 40 people out to Del Mar,” he said. “We all went crazy, had a great time. We thought he could keep going and we wanted to run him long because we wanted to win the Kentucky Derby.”

After that ship sailed and American Theorem overcame his shin problems, Papaprodromou proposed a different approach.

“George said the horse does a really good job sprinting, so he cut him back in distance,” Kretz said. “The horse has a ton of heart and obviously Georgie loves him. It's his favorite horse.”

Papaprodromou said American Theorem is at his best “from six furlongs to a mile. Keeping him happy and sound is the most important thing,” he said. “He can go short, long. He can settle, make one big run.”

“If we can win the O'Brien, we've got some options,” said Kretz.

 

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