Jockey Armando Ayuso moves tack to Southern California
Jockey Armando Ayuso knows his way around Santa Anita.
A fixture on the jockey roster in Northern California since the autumn of 2020, Ayuso worked in the late 2010s as an exercise rider in Southern California for trainers such as Mark Glatt and Jim Cassidy.
Ayuso returned to Santa Anita this week. While the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting ends on Sunday, Ayuso plans to ride the three-week Los Alamitos meeting, which begins on June 25, and the Del Mar summer meeting, which begins on July 22.
“The plan is to come back and show my face here,” Ayuso said on Thursday morning. “This is the big league.”
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Ayuso left Northern California this week when that circuit begins a two-month swing through county fairs at Pleasanton, Sacramento and Santa Rosa, with a lesser meeting held in the far north of the state at Ferndale in August. Those venues typically struggle to attract large fields and run for lower prize money than other tracks in the state.
Racing is held most of the year at Golden Gate Fields in Northern California, which ended its winter- spring meeting on Sunday and will not resume racing until the second half of August.
The decision to move south was an easy one for the 28-year-old Ayuso.
“We had nothing to lose,” he said. “It’s the fairs right now.”
Ayuso finished third at the Golden Gate winter-spring meeting this year with 72 wins, behind Evin Roman (87) and Pedro Terrero (83). They have remained in Northern California.
Ayuso was the leading rider at Golden Gate until late February and stayed in the top three for the remainder of the meeting. Suspension days cost him a chance at a better finish, he said.
“I’m really happy with how I did over there,” he said. “We were fighting for the title. We were close to them.”
Ayuso is the latest transplant from Northern California to make a summertime move to Southern California. Juan Hernandez, the leading rider at Santa Anita, and Ricky Gonzalez relocated in 2020, a year after Abel Cedillo made the move. Kyle Frey was the leading rider at the 2020-2021 Golden Gate meeting and moved to Southern California last summer.
Through Sunday, Cedillo ranked fourth in the Santa Anita standings, while Frey was 8th and Gonzalez was 12th.
“I think I have a good chance to do what they have done,” Ayuso said.
The Southern California jockey roster changed considerably earlier this year when perennial leader Flavien Prat relocated to the East Coast. Hernandez has been the immediate beneficiary, but several riders are hoping to challenge him for the top position this summer.
Ayuso has four mounts on Friday’s program at Santa Anita and two on Saturday, including Dancing Mo in the $100,000 Fasig-Tipton Debutante for 2-year-old fillies. Ayuso won the first stakes of his career aboard Sadie Bluegrass in the Camilla Urso Stakes for female turf sprinters at Golden Gate Fields on April 30.
A native of Panama, Ayuso rode at Mid-Atlantic tracks and in the Midwest from 2012 to 2015 before taking a break from riding until the autumn of 2020. Through Sunday, he had won 313 races from 2,161 mounts in the United States. This year, he is on course for a career-best season, having won 72 races compared to 117 for all of 2021.
Results over the next three months will determine whether Ayuso stays in Southern California.
“I think we’ve got good mounts for Friday and Saturday,” he said. “For sure, everybody wants to stay here. We can get the opportunity and see what happens.”