Escobedo looks to ride momentum from big weekend

Last weekend was a microcosm in the evolving career of 39-year-old jockey Adrian Escobedo.

On Saturday, Escobedo won the first graded stakes of his career when Domain Expansion scored a 14-1 upset in the Grade 2 Oak Leaf Stakes at Santa Anita. A day later, Escobedo rode Blockade to a second-place finish in the Grade 3 Surfer Girl Stakes.

When Santa Anita’s program ended Sunday, Escobedo dashed approximately 35 miles to Los Alamitos to ride Blame It On Abby to a fourth-place finish in a mixed-breed race at 1,000 yards.

Another milestone is looming.

Escobedo, who began riding in 2021, will have his first mount in the Breeders’ Cup on Oct. 30 at Keeneland aboard Domain Expansion in the Juvenile Fillies.

“It’s amazing,” Escobedo said last weekend. “I feel like I’m just starting out.”

Riding at Santa Anita is a long way from his start in Arizona earlier this decade and his past as a vocalist in a Banda group, a style of music featuring brass and percussion with roots in Mexico.

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“There were 18 of us,” he said of the band. “Three trombones, three trumpets. I was a singer. I did music for a long time. We played weddings, quinceaneras. We played Turf Paradise.

“People would request a song and they’d say you should be a jockey. I would get this very often.”

Escobedo listened. Inspired by the Triple Crown winners American Pharoah and Justify, Escobedo began looking into racing as a career option in the late 2010s.

After working as an exercise rider in Arizona, Oklahoma, and at Golden Gate Fields, Escobedo rode his first winner at Turf Paradise in November 2021. He rode at Golden Gate Fields in the winter of 2022-23 before moving to Southern California.

This weekend, Escobedo has two mounts at Santa Anita on Friday, Saturday, and Monday. On Friday, Escobedo rides Halninethousand in the sixth race for Ryan Hanson, the trainer of Blockade, and Musical Song in the ninth race for Ruben Gomez.

Halninethousand is a contender in a $12,500 claimer for maiden California-breds at a mile.

Escobedo exercises horses in the mornings for Hanson.

Escobedo had his first stakes mounts on the daytime circuit in California at Del Mar in 2024 and his first stakes placing at the end of that year at Santa Anita when Fomo Joe was second in the Eddie Logan Stakes.

For Hanson this year, Escobedo has ridden Bank Shot to three second- and third-place finishes in graded stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Del Mar and Santa Anita.

Escobedo, who was born in Mexico and moved to California as an infant, had 200 career wins through Wednesday. He won a career-best 74 races in 2024 and 61 last year. This year, he has 21 wins but had never won a race as lucrative as the $200,500 Oak Leaf, which he won for trainer Leonard Powell.

The BC Juvenile Fillies has a purse of $2 million.

“Anything is possible in this life,” Escobedo said.

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