Jockey Riquelme relishing his opportunities

NEW ORLEANS – In the track kitchen at Fair Grounds last Sunday, jockey Jose Riquelme was accepting congratulations from other riders, agents, trainers, and others who work on the backstretch for his win the day before in the Louisiana Handicap on Hard Aces. His victory clearly was popular.

“Everybody’s happy,” Riquelme said. “Everybody’s pulling for me. It’s hard to get in the big stables. They have to see you doing good. It’s hard to get the good horses.”

Stakes victories – stakes mounts, for that matter – have been few and far between for Riquelme since he first came to Fair Grounds for the 2003-04 meet. Riding Hard Aces for trainer Larry Jones, who certainly qualifies as a “big stable,” Riquelme earned his fourth Fair Grounds stakes win. He won one stakes race in the 2012-13 season and two stakes in the 2003-04 meet, when he finished 10th in the jockeys’ standings.

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Hard Aces, at 9-1 the longest shot in the field in the Louisiana Handicap, was Riquelme’s 53rd stakes mount at Fair Grounds.
“He was good,” Riquelme said of Hard Aces, a 5-year-old whose four-length victory made him a stakes winner in his 19th start. “He impressed me.”

Riquelme let Hard Aces settle at the back of the pack in the early running before guiding him on a wide sweep around rivals on the final turn.

“He made the move, so I just kept riding,” Riquelme said. “I should have waited a little bit. When he made his move, I didn’t want to stop.”
After Thursday, Riquelme had 12 wins from 114 mounts at the meet and was tied for ninth in the jockeys’ standings. In the previous two Fair Grounds seasons combined, he won 11 races.

Besides Jones, Al Stall Jr. is another prominent Fair Grounds trainer for whom Riquelme has won this season. On Thursday, he won for the second time on Sweet Baby Gaines, a turf gelding trained by Stall.

Also, successful Louisiana trainers Eddie Johnston and Wes Hawley, who, Riquelme said, would ride him at Louisiana Downs but not in New Orleans, have given him opportunities at this meet. All in all, the jockey’s business is picking up.

“Jose is one of those good, hard-trying riders,” Jones said. “He’ll ride a 20-1 shot like he’s 2-5. You’ve got to have that as a trainer.”

“Last year, I was supposed to do good,” Riquelme said.

He said he was set to ride a few horses for Jones early last season. But during training hours one morning, a loose horse slammed into Riquelme, whose foot was smashed into the outside fence. The injuries, which included four crushed toes, sidelined him until the final few weeks of the meet. He had won two races before being injured and won three more at the end of the meet.

Riquelme, 41, has been riding since 1992. His career started in his native Peru, where he rode against Jose Mena, father of Fair Grounds jockey Miguel Mena. Four races after the Louisiana Stakes, Miguel Mena won the Lecomte on International Star to make it a two-stakes day for Peruvian jockeys.

Riquelme said he rode for seven years under contract in Panama before coming to the United States – Saratoga was his first U.S. track – in 1999. After spending two years in New York, he went to Pennsylvania in 2001. “[Trainer] Keith Dickey brought me over here,” Riquelme said. “I never left.”

Riquelme averaged about 30 wins per meet in his first three seasons at Fair Grounds. His season high was 34 wins in the 2006-07 meet, but since then hasn’t surpassed 15 wins in a season.

His most productive year as a jockey was 2006, when he won 99 races, and his mounts earned $2.2 million. Riquelme has 788 career wins and $14.9 million in purse earnings from 8,574 mounts.

And if Hard Aces keeps improving, Riquelme might have a shot at his first graded-stakes victory.