Valdivia notches two-bagger on Saturday

ARCADIA, Calif. – Jockey Jose Valdivia Jr. equaled his best day of the winter-spring meeting on Saturday, winning two races on a card for the first time in two months.

Valdivia won the first race on Mind Meld ($7.60) and the fourth on Love My Jimmy ($9.80).

“It’s nice when they run like that,” Valdivia said Sunday morning. “Fast horses make everyone look good.”

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Valdivia, 46, has won seven races at the winter-spring meeting.

Valdivia was a top rider in Southern California in the early 2000s before relocating to the Midwest, where he was leading rider at Arlington Park for five consecutive seasons from 2015 through 2019. Valdivia has been back in Southern California since the final months of 2019, lured to the circuit because of his family’s year-round residence and the decline of racing in Illinois.

His career has been highlighted by big race wins on Val Royal in the 2001 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Belmont Park and Ruler On Ice in the 2011 Belmont Stakes.

Val Royal won three stakes in the United States, twice with Valdivia in the saddle. Val Royal was owned by television writer and producer David Milch and trained by Julio Canani, who died earlier this year. There were photos in many publications of Valdivia crossing under the finish line after the BC Mile on Val Royal with a huge grin.

Sunday, Valdivia recalled how Canani sometimes surprised him with his efforts to improve a horse.

“He was the mad scientist,” Valdivia said. “He knew what he was doing. He could see something in horses and get them right.

“He would be more worried about an $8,000 claimer than a Grade 1 horse he trained for David Milch.”