jockey

How did we get hooked on this sport? We all have stories about how our love affair developed and blossomed. The TDN will be reaching out to numerous notable people in the industry to get their stories to find out how they got hooked and stayed hooked on the sport. Pat Day: I had no connection to horse racing when I was growing up. I wanted to be a bull rider. When I went to the rodeos, people would ask me did I ever think of becoming a jockey? I'm...

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, jockey Luan Machado appeared to misjudge the finish line in Wednesday's eighth race at Keeneland, costing his mount Ultimate Strike (Mineshaft) the win in the maiden claimer. Depending on the distance of its races, Keeneland uses two finish lines and in this mile-and-a-sixteenth dirt race, the race was to end at the second of the two finish lines. Ultimate Strike took command on the far turn and was, according to track announcer Kurt Becker, five lengths in front at the sixteenth pole or...

Jockey Dylan Davis joined this week's TDN Writers' Room to discuss his win aboard Tapit Trice in the GII Woodward Stakes and recap his memorable Saratoga season.

Globe-trotting jockey Frankie Dettori was unseated from his mount at the starting gate prior to the start of the ninth race at Aqueduct Thursday and has been taken to Jamaica Hospital for further evaluation. NYRA publicity also reported that he was able to walk himself over to the ambulance. His mount, the 2-year-old filly Pretty Liza (Kantharos), was scratched and ponied back to the barn area. She is trained by Rudy Rodriguez. The race, a six-furlong maiden special weight on grass, was won by the Mike Maker-trained first-time starter Miriam's...

Jockey Franny Norton will retire on Sept. 21, the contemporary of Frankie Dettori announced on Instagram. The Liverpool native will end his career riding at Chester Racecourse. Norton, who turned 54 this year, began riding in 1988. A Chester specialist, he was a close ally of Mark Johnston, and now rides for his son Charlie, among others. Throughout his career, Norton has been associated with several Pattern winners including Permian (Ire) (Teofilo {Ire}), and G1 St Leger second Sir Ron Priestley (GB) (Australia {GB}), to name a few. A notable...

They say that once horse racing gets in your blood, it never leaves. Lee Vickers has no doubts about that. For him, a passion for the sport was practically embedded into his genetic code. Both his father and his grandfather were jockeys in his native England and Vickers was riding racehorses himself by age 12. Over the past three decades since, Vickers has ridden dozens of top-level horses on both sides of the Atlantic. This year, the assistant trainer and exercise rider for Christophe Clement is enjoying the ride with...

At the start of this year's Saratoga meet, jockey Dylan Davis had a goal of beating the 19 wins he came home with last year. With two weeks still left to go before the NYRA circuit heads back downstate, Davis has already accomplished what he set out to do. He has scored 23 wins, including multiple stakes victories and his first Grade I in the U.S., and is currently ranked fourth in a highly competitive Saratoga jockey colony. The 29-year-old has finished in the money in 45% of his 119...

Jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. talks superstar filly Thorpedo Anna, who is bound for the GI Travers Stakes, on this week's TDN Writers' Room.

It's a good time to be Flavien Prat. He has amassed $13.4 million in earnings so far this year, is riding regularly for the Chad Brown barn and, through the first half of the year has won 26 graded stakes, four of them worth $1 million or more. This is what he hoped for when he made the decision in 2022 to leave Southern California, where he was dominating, to come East, which is firmly established as one of the very best jockey colonies in the sport.      ...

Flavien Prat is performing at the top of jockey standings both in New York and on a national stage. The rider joined this week's TDN Writers' Room to discuss his background in the sport, the move from California to New York, the recent impressive win aboard Unmatched Wisdom and more.

Former Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey Drayden Van Dyke, a mainstay in Southern California, will move his tack to Gulfstream Park for 30 days to ride for trainer Saffie Joseph, Jr. The multiple Grade I-winning rider and his agent, Ryan Cosato, will then evaluate where Van Dyke will be based in the future. "We'll bring him out there for about a month," said Cosato. "If he does well, we'll go from there. There's no big announcement. We're just giving it a try." Van Dyke took a break from riding for a...

Richard Migliore, a retired jockey and now a racing analyst for NYRA and Fox Sports, joins this week's TDN Writers' Room to discuss a jam-packed card for Belmont Stakes weekend.