California riding circuit is as bad as their horses
 

just mediocre jockeys every where.

the peeps on tvg always sold the colony as one of the toughest, lol. It was tough because there were 20 jockeys and 5-6 horses per race. It was tough to get a mount, not tough colony.

kentucky, louisana, illinois, etc jockeys would go out there, and beat their brains in, and dominate the colony.


cali racing is really bad, if not for KY and fla breeding horses for them, it would be another quarter horse track.

Got back from Del Mar, lol at it being one of top tracks, another BS story told by cali pundits and cali people. Keeneland and Saratoga are much better and will continue being top tracks in the world.

It wasn't so long ago we were speculating why Flavien was walking away from all that easy money in Cali. I guess he knew the party was over.

Hector Berrios is excellent on grass.

Can you provide examples as to what makes CA jockeys so mediocre?

How about the fact that Rosario ate their lunch over the weekend and he's looked out of his depth at NYRA and Gulstream over the past year...

Do you ever post things that aren't Twitter narratives?

Joel didn't have a good year. However, like many opinions on Twitter, this is blown way out of proportion. One of the reasons his ride on Surge Capacity worked out as well as it did, is that she is a very rare horse that gains momentum rallying inside. Joel stays inside more than most riders, to say the least, and this blew up a lot on him over the past year or so. My best guess is part of this is random, but at least some of this is that other riders got hip to what he was doing, and became more aware that they could often trap him in there, and at best this required his horses to have to stay inside to rally, and many horses simply won't do this.

Joel Rosario is a very talented rider. Even in a bad year, he's one of the best in the country. Riding in NY against a higher percentage of top riders will be more difficult than riding in CA which doesn't have as deep and strong a colony. He will get better mounts overall there, which alone means he will win more races.

CA based jockeys have won two BC races in the last 5 editions of the event and one of those was Prat on Storm the Court when he was a CA regular. They haven’t won a Triple Crown race since Prat won on Rombauer and he’s clearly not a regular anymore.

Rispoli is an above average jockey in that colony and he went 0-19 at Keeneland in the spring of 2022 and raced back to CA.

I watch a LOT of CA racing and am pretty confident that none of the regulars there would win regularly in KY, FL or NY.

As Eddie Arcaro once said during an interview, the jockey is about 5%, with the horse he is riding is about 95% responsible during the running of a race.

However, this is irrelevant to this particular conversation, as this is about relative abilities of riders.

I see what I consider 'non-optimal' rides every day everywhere. Stuff like 5 wide on the turn, getting stuck behind slowing horses, or blocked where there is no where for them to accelerate.

What I keep reminding myself is these horses are going 35 miles per hour and the jockeys during a race are always only seconds from going down with possibly broken bones, paralysis or death.

Does a jockey have to have no fear, be hyper aggressive and willing to squeeze between 2 horses in the 2 foot gap before they are considered good?

You do know that riders choose this dangerous job, right? Nobody puts a gun to their head or threatens them. Before you say this is uncaring, riders readily acknowledge this.

Some riders are better than others. No different than any sport or competitive activity.

Is Frankie Dettori still coming to California for 2024?

horses make riders, put them on good horses and they would win at roughly the same percentages.

So you don't think Prat is any better than the other riders in the jock's room at Santa Anita?

If you gave Irad Ortiz the mounts Juan Hernandez gets in SoCal he’d be close to 60%. And I think Juan Hernandez would be 15% at best in the NYRA colony, even with Irad or Jose Ortiz’s agent.