Five jockeys nominated for George Woolf Award

Five riders who have combined to win 14,508 races through Tuesday have been nominated for the 2024 George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award presented by Santa Anita, the track announced on Wednesday.

Junior Alvarado (who has won 2,082 races), Alex Birzer (3,826), Julien Leparoux (2,956), Edwin Maldonado (1,532), and Rodney Prescott (4,112) have been selected as finalists.

The award, which will be presented in February, is based on success on the track combined with a rider’s character. The 2024 recipient will be the 75th time the track has presented the award, which is voted on by riders nationwide.

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The New York-based Alvarado, 37, is known as the regular rider of the immensely popular colt Cody’s Wish, who won the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Santa Anita on Nov. 4 and is a leading contender for 2023 Horse of the Year.

Birzer, 50, has been leading rider at Prairie Meadows in Iowa and at The Woodlands in Kansas City when that track was in operation. Birzer is currently riding at Delta Downs in Louisiana.

Leparoux, 40, has been a leading rider at Keeneland on 10 occasions and won Eclipse Awards as the nation’s outstanding apprentice of 2006 and outstanding jockey in 2009. He rode at Churchill Downs earlier this fall, and is now at Oaklawn Park.

Maldonado, 41, stands 5-foot 8-inches and has been a fixture in Southern California since 2010. He finished fourth in the standings at the tough Del Mar autumn meeting that ended last weekend and is riding the next two weeks at Los Alamitos.

Prescott, 49, was leading rider at Horseshoe Indianapolis in 2004, 2005, and 2018 – when the track was known as Indiana Grand – and was sixth in the 2023 meeting that ended last month.

The Woolf award honors the memory of the nationally prominent rider who rode Seabiscuit to a famous win in a match race against War Admiral in 1938. Woolf died as a result of injuries sustained in a race at Santa Anita in 1946.

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