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Irad Ortiz Jr. Rides Six Winners At Gulfstream: ‘Tomorrow, Everybody WIll Forget’

Two-time defending Championship Meet titlist Irad Ortiz Jr. rode six winners on Saturday's 12-race program at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla.

After notching a natural hat trick with victories aboard Hard Game ($8) in Race 2, Noble Empire ($3) in Race 3 and Bourbon in May ($7.60) in Race 4, Ortiz scored aboard Great Island ($2.60) in Race 6, the $100,000 Suwannee River, Democracy ($15.60) in Race 7, and R Mercedes Boy ($5.60) in Race 9.

Ortiz has ridden a meet-leading 76 winners, 16 more than Luis Saez.

“You never think that you're going to win that many races, but you come here positive,” Ortiz said. “You try to win every race. I ride all my horses with the same mind. I try to win, no matter what. I think that helps. I got the right horses, too. My agent does a great job and all the trainers support me. They give me a lot of good chances, and the owners. Right now, we're in a good position, thank God. I'm glad. I feel great.

“It's pretty great. You don't have too many days like this, so I just enjoy it. For me, honestly, I go home and it's just another day. Tomorrow everybody will forget what happened today. I just move on. I celebrate the way I want to; I go home with my family. That's it, and tomorrow is a new day.”

The record for most wins on a Gulfstream program is 7, shared by Jerry Bailey (3/11/96), Tyler Gaffalione (7/4/17), Luis Saez (1/24/18 and 3/29/18) and Paco Lopez (3/21/20).

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Racing Pioneer Sylvia Bishop Featured In New Book

A chance meeting, an exchange of pleasantries in Virginia with a stranger while waiting in line for a cup of coffee, led Vicky Moon on a 15-year journey that has resulted in “Sylvia Rideoutt Bishop Had a Way With Horses.”

The book tells the story of Bishop, a pioneer in sport who became the first Black woman to win a Thoroughbred race as a licensed trainer, according to Moon's book, while training horses at Laurel Park, Timonium and Charles Town, as well as former tracks Hagerstown Race Course, Shenandoah Downs and Cumberland Race Track.

Moon, an author of several books including the “The Private Passion of Jackie Kennedy Onassis” and “Equestrian Life,” was fortunate to spend time with Bishop before she died in December of 2004.

“After the chance meeting with one of her relatives waiting for coffee, I was able to spend one day a week with her from August of 2004 until December of that year when she passed away,” Moon said. “She knew the impact of what she did, but in a very unassuming way. She would sit on her couch and say, 'I was the first Black woman to do this.'”

There was probably no one better to tell Bishop's story than Moon, who grew up in Fort Lauderdale, learned to ride in nearby Davie, and watched her family's horses run at Gulfstream Park, Hialeah Park and Calder as a child.

“My mother would let me skip school to go to Hialeah,” recalled Moon, a resident of Fort Lauderdale who spends summers in Virginia.

Moon's chance encounter in the coffee shop and the time she spent with Bishop led to her 15-year study of Bishop's life as well as her determination to break stereotypes and segregation in Thoroughbred racing over the past century.

Born in West Virginia, Bishop, one of 17 children, worked as a groom at Charles Town at the age of 14. While many of the horses she trained ran under her husband's name, she became the first licensed Black woman to train the winner of a Thoroughbred race in the United States on October of 1959 with a horse named Chalkee.

Bishop, who left racing for financial reasons between 1973-1987 to work at Doubleday publishing, trained some horses for Nelson Bunker Hunt as well as Fasig-Tipton President Tyson Gilpin. It was Gilpin's Bright Gem who afforded Bishop one of her biggest victories, winning the Iron Horse Mile at Shenandoah in 1962. Eddie Arcaro presented the winning trophy and Carl Gambardella was aboard. She returned to training in the 1980s and saddled her last winner in 2000, visiting the Charles Town winner's circle with Lone Wolf in February of that year.

“Sylvia Rideoutt Bishop Had a Way With Horses” is available as a book and on Kindle at Amazon.com. Autographed hardback books are available at vickymoon.com.

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Retired Trainer Julio Canani, Winner Of 1989 Big ‘Cap, Passes At Age 83

A native of Peru and a longtime trainer in Southern California, Julio Canani passed away at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena following a lengthy illness Friday morning at age 83, according to his daughter, Lisa. Retired for the past several years, Canani trained the longshot winner of the 1989 Santa Anita Handicap, Martial Law ($130.60), who was ridden by Martin Pedroza and owned in part by Jeff Siegel and Barry Irwin's Clover Racing Stable.

Self-made, Canani came to America as a teenager, initially working for a landscaping company before making his way to the racetrack, where his betting instincts and innate guile enabled him to establish a social and economic base from which he would eventually become a multiple stakes winning conditioner who forever spoke fractured English while readily dispensing a wide variety of nicknames—some complimentary, some, not so much.

Although the 1989 Big 'Cap surely helped to put him on the map, Canani gained national recognition by winning three Breeders' Cup races. The Mile, in 1999 and 2001 with Silic and Val Royal, and with Sweet Catomine, who won the 2004 Juvenile Fillies and was subsequently named Eclipse Champion 2-year-old Filly.

Although the truth quite often escaped him, Canani had an instinctive feel for what reporters were looking for and he often attracted notice by wearing a variety of hats, including natural fur chapeaus that were better suited for a Siberian Winter but nonetheless helped facilitate dozens of interviews, print and broadcast, over a career that spanned roughly 50 years.

Canani, who cut his training teeth via the claimbox, won his first stakes race in the 1975 Oceanside at Del Mar with Willmar, who he had haltered for $20,000. His lengthy list of stakes winners included Bruho, Putting, Silver Circus, Davie's Lamb, Tranquility Lake, Tuzla, Silent Sighs, Ladies Din, Special Ring, Amorama and others.

Canani, who saddled his last horse, Fantastic Mizz, to a second place finish on Oct. 23, 2015 at Santa Anita, finished with 1,137 wins and purse earnings of more than $49 million.

Divorced from his first wife, Jane, Canani is survived by their two children, Lisa and Nick, as well as his current wife, Svetlana and their two children, Isabella and Alexander. Julio Canani is also survived by two grandchildren and one great grandchild.

There are no funeral services planned at this time, but the Canani family has requested donations be made to the Edwin J. Gregson Foundation.

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Laurel Park: Recovering From Spill, Carrasco To Miss Weekend Races

Journeyman rider Victor Carrasco, the Eclipse Award-winning apprentice of 2013, will sit out racing this weekend at Laurel Park in Maryland to continue his recovery from a Jan. 29 spill.

Carrasco was shaken up but escaped serious injury when he went down in the stretch of the fourth race last Friday. He took off his two remaining mounts that day as well as the Jan. 30 program. The Jan. 31 card was moved to Thursday to create a four-day live racing weekend.

“He was shaken up a little bit but the biggest problem he had was in his toe, which is doing good. Nothing major, just a little setback,” Carrasco's agent, Scotty Silver, said Thursday. “If he's feeling good, which he says he is as of today, because I talked to him this morning, we'll be good to go for next weekend.”

Carrasco entered Thursday's card ranking in the top 10 at the ongoing winter meet in wins (five) and purse earnings ($212,307). Live racing continues Friday through Sunday.

“He's actually doing much better and we're shooting for next weekend,” Silver said. “He's not going to ride this weekend but hopefully everything goes good and he'll be back definitely by next Friday.”

Agent Tom Stift reported Thursday that jockey Alex Cintron, who last rode Jan. 29 at Laurel, will return to ride Friday.

Notes: Jockey Xavier Perez swept the early daily double Thursday with wins aboard Valued Notion ($19.60) in Race 1 and Blue Sky Painter ($9.80) in Race 2 … Disputed Notion ($35) upset Thursday's finale and produced carryover jackpot payouts of $27,210.10 in the 50-cent Late Pick 5 and $25,658.34 in the 20-cent Rainbow 6 to one lucky winner. Disputed Notion was the first winner for owner-trainer Carlyne Tapscott since March 4, 2018 … There will be a carryover of $875.69 in the $1 Super Hi-5 for the opener of Friday's nine-race program. Post time is 12:25 p.m.

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