Persistent Arrieta starts fresh once again at Fair Grounds

The jockey Francisco Arrieta could teach a master class in persistence.

Arrieta, a 32-year-old Venezuelan native, moved his tack to the United States late in 2014, stopping briefly in South Florida before trying to break into the New York circuit. Instead, the New York circuit nearly broke Arrieta. From 2015 through 2017, Arrieta rode 210 races – mainly in New York, but also at other East Coast tracks – and won three times. Let’s emphasize that – three years, three winners.

Now, Arrieta has moved his tack for the first time to Fair Grounds, his career turned totally around since he left New York for New Mexico. Arrieta was leading rider at Zia Park during the New Mexico track’s September through December 2019 season, and had been the runaway leading rider at the 2018-2019 Turf Paradise meet. He was leading rider at the 2019 Canterbury Park meet, was second-leading rider there this season, and was easily leading rider during his first meet at Hawthorne this fall until a spill during morning training cut short his Chicago stay.

Since the start of 2018, Arrieta has ridden 595 winners from 2,437 mounts, a far cry from the fallow New York seasons and the 13th-highest total during the period among all North American jockeys.

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The time in New York “was really, really frustrating, but that taught me a lot, too,” Arrieta said. “One thing is to never lose my dream. I kept that in my heart and mind every day.”

Arrieta, married with three daughters, went to jockey’s school in Venezuela and began riding at age 16. Years before New York, he had to endure a rough patch in Venezuela, too. Arrieta was riding at a private track, Rancho Alegre, in Ciudad Bolivar in southeastern Venezuela, but moved to Caracas in 2009 and tried to make inroads at La Rinconada, Venezuela’s most prominent racecourse.

“I tried for maybe six months, but it’s hard to get in, and it was too hard to find the opportunities, so I had to go back,” he said. “The horse is 80 percent of it. You can’t do anything without the horse. Opportunity makes the difference. I was in a tough place, in New York. I already know what to do in a race, but I don’t have the horse.”

Tim Hanisch, the agent for established Fair Grounds jockey Mitchell Murrill, reached out to Arrieta near the end of the Canterbury meet wondering if he had an interest in Hawthorne and Fair Grounds. Things were going great at Hawthorne until a training spill Nov. 5 dislocated his clavicle, and even three weeks after his final Hawthorne mount, Arrieta has an eight-win lead in the jockey standings with 28 winners. Things won’t come as easily in New Orleans, no doubt, but Arrieta already has shown he can wait out a cold spell.