Elliott to receive Woolf Memorial Jockey Award

Stewart Elliott, who won the 2004 Kentucky Derby aboard the popular colt Smarty Jones, has been named the recipient of the 2017 Santa Anita George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award.

The award is voted on by riders nationwide and reflects career achievement and personal character. Elliott, 51, is riding at the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting. He is scheduled to receive the trophy in a ceremony at Santa Anita in late March.

The award was first presented in 1950 and honors the late jockey who died as a result of injuries suffered in a spill at Santa Anita in 1946.

Elliott was one of five finalists along with Kerwin Clark, Julien Leparoux, Glen Murphy, and Scott Stevens.

A native of Canada, Elliott has won more than 4,700 races. Aboard Smarty Jones, Elliott also won the Preakness Stakes, Arkansas Derby, and four other stakes in 2003-04. Smarty Jones, the 2004 champion 3-year-old male, was second to Birdstone in the Belmont Stakes in June 2004, missing a sweep of the Triple Crown by a length.

Since the Smarty Jones years, Elliott has won Grade 1 races on Round Pond and Wildcat Heir. Last year, he won the Grade 3 L.A. Woman Stakes at Santa Anita on Gloryzapper.

Elliott won 62 races in 2016. He sustained a rib injury at Del Mar in August 2014 and rode at Keeneland that fall. Elliott did not ride in 2015, taking part in a business on a deer lodge property in Kentucky. Elliott returned to riding in Southern California in January 2016. He was the leading rider at the Los Alamitos September meeting last year.

Through Thursday, Elliott had 11 wins from 102 mounts at the winter-spring meeting and was tied for seventh in the standings.