Apprentice Hernandez making up for lost time
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – There are times when Benjamin Hernandez wonders what might have been. But now that he’s experiencing some success, Hernandez is more focused on the present and the future than the past.
Presently, Hernandez is a seven-pound apprentice jockey who has ridden 11 winners from 61 mounts at Aqueduct’s winter meet, placing him eighth in the standings. Not bad for a jockey who rode his first race on this circuit last October. If he can continue at this rate, his future looks bright.
Hernandez, 28, attended the same jockey school as brothers Irad and Jose Ortiz in Puerto Rico and was a classmate of Jose’s. But a badly broken leg suffered early in 2012 kept Hernandez off horses for more than a year.
Since 2013, Hernandez has worked in New York as an exercise rider for myriad trainers, including John Kimmel, Todd Pletcher, and Tom Morley. He often returned to Puerto Rico to visit his now-5-year-old son, who lives there with his mother.
Hernandez was going to start his jockey career early in 2018 at Charles Town and then Parx, but he was forced to return to Puerto Rico to get relicensed as an apprentice.
By the time Hernandez returned to the U.S., it was well into the fall, and since he planned to ride in New York this winter anyway, he decided just to start here. Hernandez rode his first race Oct. 19, finishing second on Kerry Boy. He won his first race on Nov. 14 at Aqueduct aboard Alright Alright, a horse he has since won twice more on for trainer John Toscano Jr.
“That horse runs for him,” Toscano said. “He got left the other day and still won. He’s got a future.”
Kimmel believes Hernandez has benefitted from exercising horses for as long as he did.
“There’s so many of these jockeys that never go through the education of what it’s like to gallop horses day in and day out,” said Kimmel, who has put Hernandez on two winners this winter. “They go to jockey school and never spend years learning about horses changing leads and all these other things. I think it’s certainly an advantage for somebody like that to have that experience galloping horses.”
Kimmel said that Hernandez once questioned whether he had the ability to be a jockey.
“With each passing month and success, he’s getting a lot more confidence in himself,” Kimmel said. “It’s kind of exciting to see a young man develop like that.”
As Hernandez sees the success the Ortiz brothers have had, he said he sometimes wonders where his career would be had he started sooner.
“Now that I’m riding, I say, ‘Wow, I could have done this years earlier, and probably things would have been different,’ ” Hernandez said. “But at the same time, I’m a strong believer that sometimes it’s not in your time, it’s in God’s time, so I’m just enjoying the moment, and I think this is the time. I’m working very hard, day by day.
“I see them,” Hernandez said, referring to the Ortiz brothers, “and I feel excitement and happiness for them. I feel happy for them [that] they had their moment. Now, I’m working hard to have my moment.”
