Protocols could derail Prat's record run at Del Mar
Travel plans on Labor Day weekend could disrupt jockey Flavien Prat’s hopes to be leading rider or to break the record for most stakes wins at the Del Mar summer meeting.
Through Sunday, Prat was second in the jockeys’ standings with 21 wins, three fewer than leader Umberto Rispoli. They were followed in the first five by Juan Hernandez (15), Abel Cedillo (14), and Tiago Pereira (12).
Prat has won eight stakes at the meeting, which began on July 10 and concludes Sept. 7. The record of 13 stakes wins at a summer meeting was set in 2012 by Rafael Bejarano.
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Prat is scheduled to ride at Churchill Downs on Sept. 4-5 for the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby programs. If he travels to Kentucky, Prat would be unable to ride the final two days of the Del Mar meeting of Sept. 6-7 because of a Del Mar policy that forbids jockeys from traveling to other circuits during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our policy remains as is,” track president Josh Rubinstein said on Wednesday. “We need to continue to protect not just the riders but everybody racing at Del Mar. We’ve got to keep the room safe.”
Del Mar lost three days of racing from July 17-19 because of a coronavirus outbreak in the jockeys’ room. Prat was one of the riders who tested positive but was asymptomatic. He resumed riding when racing restarted on July 24.
Further complicating matters for Prat is that track officials at Churchill Downs may require riders to be in Kentucky as early as Aug. 24 to undergo preliminary testing in the buildup to Kentucky Derby weekend. If implemented, the policy would prevent Prat from riding at Del Mar on the weekend of Aug. 28-30, when three stakes will be run.
During the Labor Day weekend at Del Mar, from Sept. 4-7, there are seven stakes scheduled.
If Prat cannot ride at Del Mar on Sept. 6-7, he is likely to remain in Kentucky for the start of the Kentucky Downs meeting on Sept. 7, according to his agent, Derek Lawson.
Prat may be much closer to Bejarano’s record in the next 10 days.
This weekend, Del Mar runs two minor stakes. Prat rides Mucho Unusual in the $125,000 Solana Beach Stakes for California-bred fillies and mares on turf on Saturday, and is scheduled to ride Siberian Iris in Sunday’s $75,000 CTT and TOC Stakes for fillies and mares on turf.
Prat, 28, will be active on the Aug. 22 program, which has five stakes and is the most lucrative program of the meeting. Prat’s leading mounts that day are expected to include Higher Power in the Grade 1 Pacific Classic and United in the Grade 2 Del Mar Handicap.
Higher Power won the 2019 Pacific Classic. United, the leading turf male in California, won the Grade 2 Eddie Read Stakes at Del Mar on July 26.
Rispoli, who relocated from Hong Kong in December, won eight races from Aug. 7 through Sunday to take the lead in the standings. Rispoli, 31, has ridden 74 winners this year, his first season of riding in the United States.
As of Wednesday, Rispoli was unlikely to travel to Kentucky on Labor Day weekend, according to his agent, Scotty McClellan. This weekend, Rispoli rides Cordiality in the Solana Beach Stakes and is booked to ride Maxim Rate in the CTT and TOC Stakes.
Rispoli won his third stakes of the Del Mar meeting in Sunday’s Grade 3 La Jolla Handicap on Smooth Like Strait, a candidate for the Grade 2 Del Mar Derby on Sept. 6.
“There’s good competition here,” Rispoli said after the La Jolla. “We go against each other and make each other better. It’s good.”