val brinkerhoff | Horse Racing Free Tips

It's often said racing is a game of peaks and valleys. And so it was for 22-year-old Jessica Pyfer on Friday at Santa Anita, as she experienced major trouble leaving the gate aboard 6-5 favorite Give Me a Hint in the third race, only to experience the ultimate exhilaration of winning her first career race in the day's ninth and final, aboard the Val Brinkerhoff-trained Indy Jones.

“I had two more mounts and I knew I had to make it up somehow,” said Pyfer, who was soaking wet from multiple buckets of ice water administered in a time-honored fashion by her fellow jockeys prior to a winner's circle interview on TVG. “Val told me at Del Mar that this horse was ready and I really can't thank him enough for this one. I'm just feeling so blessed and so happy that I decided to go down this road.

“I knew at the top of the stretch when I was in front, that I had to stay in front. That was my only motivation to get down to the wire. It was just such an amazing feeling and all the guys in the jocks' room have been so awesome to me, celebrating me by drenching me with water, but they've all helped out so much, I just can't thank them enough.”

A native of Denver, Colo., Pyfer has been raised around racing as her father, Roger Pyfer is an ex-jockey and her mother Sherrie is now married to top trainer Phil D'Amato and assists in the management of his stable.

In what was her sixth career mount, Pyfer had Indy Jones away alertly from her number four post position, was head and head into and around the far turn with Baby Gronk to her inside, took charge a quarter mile from home and prevailed by 1 1/4 lengths while getting 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:18.50.

Winless in his last 10 starts and ridden for the first time today by Pyfer, Indy Jones, a 4-year-old gelding by Temple City who was entered for a $16,000 claiming tag, was off at 14-1 and paid $31.60, $14.60 and $7.00.

“Sixth mount. But I've learned so much in the past six months that it's just crazy how things happen.”

Indeed it is as Jessica Pyfer is now on her way as a promising young apprentice with but one mount on Saturday, the George Papaprodromou-trained Lucky Ryan Seven in the ninth race.

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Restrainedvengence, the “best horse” Val Brinkerhoff has ever trained, comes back in Saturday's Grade II City of Hope Mile on Santa Anita's turf in just over two weeks from his last race, a game head victory as the 4-5 favorite in the $200,000 Downs at Albuquerque, New Mexico over a mile and an eighth on dirt Sept. 19. It was the richest race of the meet.

“The City of Hope is a short field and he came out of his race super-good, never lost any weight and never missed a meal,” said Brinkerhoff, a former jockey who rode at the bush tracks in the northwest before becoming one of the hardest-working horsemen in the game just over a dozen years ago.

Brinkerhoff, who turns 64 on Oct. 19, still gallops his own horses.

“I think getting the horse there took more out of him than the race itself,” said Val, whose wife and dedicated assistant, Kelly, and Bobby Grayson Jr. own the five-year-old gelded son of Hold Me Back, who has an 8-3-1 record from 25 starts with earnings of $625,222. He was second by a head in the City of Hope last year.

“I missed some training on him here but he ran good enough to win despite being bumped through the stretch. He should be fit now because I missed a bunch of time after I ran him at Golden Gate (in the Grade III San Francisco Mile June 14) because of a foot issue, then I missed time because of the smoke from the fires here, but he's fine now.

“He's won stakes on three different surfaces: Tapeta, dirt and turf, so he's very versatile.” While he's never won a graded stakes, the Kentucky-bred has competed in 12 straight added money races and earned Beyer speed figures of 100 or more in three of them.

The City of Hope, race eight of 10 with a 12:30 p.m. first post time: Sharp Samurai, Juan Hernandez, 5-2; Restrainedvengence, Ruben Fuentes, 8-1; Majestic Eagle, Ricardo Gonzalez, 20-1; Royal Ship, Mike Smith, 4-1; Bob and Jackie, Heriberto Figueroa, 12-1; Blitzkrieg, Abel Cedillo, 4-1; and Mo Forza, Flavien Prat, 8-5.

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