Joel Dominguez off to fast start as journeyman

Jockey Joel Dominguez has found the key to the quarter pole at Louisiana Downs.

The 28-year-old won six of the seven races run at the Bossier City, La., track Saturday – the success coming just a month after he lost his “bug,” or apprentice allowance. Dominguez took the first five races on the card, finished third in the sixth race, and came back and won the nightcap.

“Everything just came together,” he said.

Dominguez through Sunday ranked second in the Louisiana Downs standings, trailing leader Emanuel Nieves by one win with a record of 25 wins from 150 mounts. Last year, Dominguez won 31 races during the meet as an apprentice. A native of Durango, Mexico, he was introduced to racing after moving to Kentucky.

“I was never around horses – where I came from, it was a city,” Dominguez said Monday. “When I came here, my brother-in-law was working horses, galloping horses, at the Thoroughbred Center in Lexington and I got involved. He taught me to gallop.

“I really love the horses.”

Dominguez worked for much of his formative racing years for trainer Neil Howard, spending six years with the outfit. He rode a few races in 2016 and had his first winner on May 5, 2016, at Belterra Park in Cincinnati. Dominguez then launched his riding career in earnest in 2017 at Fair Grounds in New Orleans. He believes the later start to his race-riding career – a craft many start as teens – has had its benefits.

“I wish I could have started when I was younger,” he said. “I’m just so glad it happened. I might have started a little late, [but] I think galloping horses, I had a lot of training when I started riding races. I knew a lot about pace. That really helped me.”

Don Simington, the retired jockey who won four riding titles at Louisiana Downs, is Dominguez’s agent. He said watching the Saturday card unfold was a memorable experience.

“We knew looking over the card we had live horses, and were thinking if things go right, we could win a few,” Simington said. “Joel won one, two, three, and it just kept adding up. That was crazy!”

The official winners came in the first with Gardner’s Song ($4.20); the second with Phat and Fast ($3); the third with N. D. Free ($7); the fourth with Sunshine Tutie ($4.80); the fifth with Vinyl ($2.40); and the seventh with Beautiful Gi Gi ($8.20).

Dominguez won races for five different trainers, with two of the wins coming for Al Stall Jr. It was for Stall, said Dominguez, that he won with his first mount following the loss of his apprentice allowance on May 23. Overall, the rider won five races his first week as a journeyman then had his most successful day at the track to date on Saturday.

Dominguez on Wednesday has mounts in the first, second, fifth, sixth, and seventh races at Louisiana Downs.