Turfway Park: Arroyo to ride at Oaklawn Park

Jockey Norberto Arroyo Jr. is headed to Oaklawn Park at the end of the month, forsaking Turfway Park, where he dominated last winter in a successful effort to rebuild his career.

Arroyo, a Puerto Rico native who once was a leading jockey in New York, has been riding sparingly at the current holiday meet at Turfway in northern Kentucky. He was easily the leading jockey at the 2012 holiday meet and the 2013 winter-spring meet at Turfway.

Arroyo, 36, has overcome legal and personal problems to become a reliable journeyman while riding exclusively in Kentucky for a little more than a year. He is named to ride a 2-year-old colt named Divine View in the $250,000 Springboard Mile on Sunday at Remington Park in Oklahoma, marking the first time he will ride outside Kentucky since he returned from a layoff of more than three years.

“A lot of the business at Turfway right now is Ohio and Mountaineer horses running in $5,000 conditioned claiming races, and that’s not what we want to do,” said his brother and agent, Nelson Arroyo. “We’re just trying to keep the business pretty light right now and go to Oaklawn fresh.”

Into Friday, Norberto Arroyo Jr. had won 91 races this year for mount earnings of almost $1.9 million. Those are some solid numbers but still a far cry from his earliest days in the United States, most notably the 2000 season, when he posted career highs of 192 wins and almost $7 million in mount earnings while riding primarily in New York.

His career was derailed on several occasions by trouble with the law, most notably an arrest in August 2009 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on drug charges, for which he eventually served about a year of a 2 1/2-year prison term. Except for several suspensions for riding infractions, he has been trouble-free since he and his family moved to Kentucky.

Nelson Arroyo also will represent jockey Victor Lebron at Oaklawn, where the 2014 meet begins Jan. 10. Other jockeys currently riding at Turfway who will be moving to the Arkansas track include Jon Court, Channing Hill, Roberto Morales, and Cory Orm.

Romans says he’s staying put

Dale Romans on Friday sought to downplay a newspaper report that he will be hired to train a stable in Hong Kong, where he recently met with officials when saddling Little Mike for the Hong Kong Cup.

“If an opportunity did come up, I could see myself training there in the distant future,” said Romans, who won the 2012 Eclipse Award for outstanding trainer in America. “I was really impressed with Hong Kong, but I’ve got too much to do here first, like win the Derby. There’s really nothing to report about Hong Kong right now.”

A Wednesday story in the South China Morning Post speculated that Romans could be added soon to the trainer roster by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Unlike in the United States, where trainers are independent businessmen, there are just 24 openings for trainers in Hong Kong, which has a strictly regimented in-house system.

Purse increases for Ky.-breds

Turfway officials announced Friday they will increase Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund stipends for allowance and stakes races at the holiday meet, which ends Dec. 31, and into the winter-spring meet, which runs through late March.

Allowance races will get a $1,500 raise, while five $50,000 stakes races are being increased to $60,000. An additional $25,000 from the KTDF will now make the John Battaglia Memorial worth $100,000 and the Grade 3 Bourbonette Oaks worth $125,000.

Those increases pertain only to Kentucky-breds eligible to the KTDF.