Marin uses back-to-back six-win days to clinch record for most wins at meet
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Jockey Samuel Marin turned a hot streak into history at Tampa Bay Downs last weekend, winning six races on Friday and again on Sunday to break the record for most victories in a single season. With 149 victories at the track since last November, he set the new mark well ahead of closing day on May 3.
In a press release, Marin credited his agent, Mike Moran, for working with him to secure mounts at the track over the winter.
“Mike has been doing a great job,” Marin said. “Since we started working at this meet this season. We put that into our mind as a goal. We really wanted to do it and then we worked hard for it. Thank God for it, we got it done. The dream came true.”
Marin’s latest push to the wins record, set at 147 by Tony Gallardo in 2014-15, began in the second on Friday, April 24, when the 25-year-old jockey guided She’s a Gamer to a gate-to-wire victory in a $75,000 claiming race. He went on to win the next three races and wrapped things up with a pair of maiden-claiming scores late on the nine-race card.
Not only did Marin push closer to Gallardo’s single-season record with his six-win day, but he also tied the Tampa record for most victories in a single day. On Sunday, April 26, he did it all again, tying the single-day record again and shattering the single-season record.
After taking the first and third races on another nine-race card Sunday, he swept the final four races, wrapping things up in the ninth with a $25,000 claiming victory aboard Caravaggio’s Song. Across his 12 victories on the two cards, he scored for 10 different trainers, winning twice for Gerald Bennett and Kathleen O’Connell.
“He’s come a long way since he first started at Monmouth,” Bennett said. “His agent does a good job, gets him on all the right horses. He puts the horse in the race where they have to be. He’s a worker, he’s out there early, and that’s what you have to be, and he gets to know the horses already that he’s riding.”
Having earned the trust of trainers like Chad Brown and Miguel Clement early in his career, Marin has put himself in a profound position to succeed at several tracks. Having secured 116 victories and his first riding title at Tampa last winter, the young rider is only getting better, and Bennett isn’t the only one who has noticed.
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