Fair Grounds notes: Jacinto back working horses

Veteran jockey John Jacinto, who hasn’t ridden in a race since breaking his left arm in a spill in May at Louisiana Downs, got on horses Wednesday and rode in workouts Thursday morning at Fair Grounds.

“I’m going to be here working the next couple weeks to be able to ride,” Jacinto said. “I’m going to be riding the last two weeks for sure. I need to get fit.”

Jacinto said he underwent four surgeries.

“They had to fix my bones and muscle,” he said. One surgery was to repair a tendon in his thumb, he said. Two plates were inserted in his arm, and one plate remains.

Before being injured, Jacinto had won with 21 of 95 mounts at the Louisiana Downs meet. At the 2012-13 Fair Grounds meet, he won 69 races and finished fifth in the jockeys’ standings. He has 1,782 career wins.

“Everything’s good now,” Jacinto said. “I’m feeling the way I was expecting. I’ve been working out, going to the gym, running.”

Mark Valeski prepping for return

Multiple graded stakes winner Mark Valeski, who was sidelined with a suspensory injury and hasn’t raced since finishing fourth in the Metropolitan Handicap last May, has been training at Fair Grounds for about a month.

“He’s doing good,” trainer Larry Jones said Thursday morning. Jones said Mark Valeski will run a workout in the next few days, as soon as the track dries out from a recent run of wet weather. Jones hasn’t picked a race for the 5-year-old’s 2014 debut.

“When he tells me he’s ready, we’ll find a spot for him,” Jones said.

◗ Multiple graded stakes winner Willcox Inn, who hasn’t raced since October, worked three times at Fair Grounds in February but won’t be ready for the Grade 2 Mervin Muniz at the end of the meet, trainer Mike Stidham said. The horse might open his 2014 season at Keeneland, Stidham said.