Van Dyke hopes to resume riding when Santa Anita opens Sept. 27

Jockey Drayden Van Dyke, unseated from Eight Rings in Monday’s Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity, was released from a San Diego area hospital on Wednesday and is targeting a return to riding for the start of the Santa Anita autumn meeting on Sept. 27.

Van Dyke was unseated when Eight Rings ducked sharply to the inside a furlong into the seven-furlong Del Mar Futurity. Eight Rings bumped Storm the Court, who stepped on the fallen Van Dyke’s right arm in the incident, the rider said.

Van Dyke said the arm was not broken, but sustained considerable swelling which led to a longer than expected stay in the hospital. Van Dyke broke the arm in a spill at Santa Anita in January 2017.

“It was swollen so much,” he said. “I got stepped on pretty bad.

“It’s swollen like a sonofagun. They said to keep it elevated. The pain is not as it was in the hospital.”

Van Dyke said he was treated for minor fractures around an eye that will not require surgery.

The incident happened so rapidly Van Dyke had little time to respond.

“He did it fast,” Van Dyke said. “I thought he was going to jump over the rail. He saw something that spooked him.”

Eight Rings, trained by Bob Baffert, was not injured.

“He was pretty scraped up,” Baffert said of Eight Rings. “It was superficial stuff.

“We’re still trying to figure out what happened. He saw something. It could have been a lot worse.”

Van Dyke, who turns 25 on Tuesday, finished second in the standings at the Del Mar summer meeting with 32 wins, 10 fewer than Flavien Prat, the rider of Storm the Court. At the 2018 summer meeting, Van Dyke finished first with Prat second in the rider standings.