Florent Geroux, who currently sits seventh in the national earnings rankings for jockeys in 2022, will ride in California full-time for the first time this summer at Del Mar, according to a report in Blood-Horse. Geroux, perennially one of the leading rider in Kentucky in the spring and fall, used to spend summers in Saratoga, but had moved his tack to Ellis the past few years.
Geroux's agent, Doug Bredar, told Blood-Horse his client will ride for “almost everybody at the top of the standings” at Del Mar and that the move could serve as a trial run for Geroux to move to California for the long run.
“This is short-term for the moment,” Bredar said. “We just wanted to test the waters. We've had a lot of people, a lot of horsemen out there have asked us to go in the past. We feel that now is the right time.”
The California jockey standings, dominated by Flavien Prat for the better part of the past six years, suddenly have an opening at the top after Prat decided to move his tack to New York full-time in a quest to win his first Eclipse Award. The move has paid off for Prat, who is winning at 21% at the Belmont Park meet and has surged to second nationally in earnings, behind only Irad Ortiz, Jr. The current leading rider in California, Juan Hernandez, is 10th in the country in earnings.
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