What’s A Good Name | Benoit Photo
FILLY TAKES ON THE BOYS IN FRIDAY’S GRADUATION STAKES
A six pack of some very talented Cal-bred 2-year-olds will line-up for the Friday feature, the 74th running of the $100,000 Graduation Stakes at Del Mar. All six have broken their maidens, four of them on their first time out.
Trainer Peter Miller was set to run What’s a Good Name in last week’s C.T.B.A. Stakes, but scratched her to run in the Graduation.
“It’s an extra five days and it looked like this was an easier spot, according to the sheets,” Miller suggests. “But if someone would have told me that Sadler’s horse was going to miss the break I probably would have run.”
Trainer John Sadler’s Liberation was the 1/2 favorite in the C.T.B.A. She broke slow and then got pinched back shortly after the start, nearly unseating jockey Hector I. Berrios. Afterward, the winner, My Love Caroline, was disqualified.
“She’s a nice filly,” Miller says about What’s A Good Name. “Very quick. I don’t think she needs the lead. She just out-quicked them the other day.”
He’s referring to her maiden victory last month on opening weekend at Del Mar. The addition of blinkers may have helped, too. She came to Miller from the Steve Asmussen barn and will be the only filly in Friday’s race.
“I don’t worry about that,” Miller contends. “Girls mature faster than boys.”
Hero Or Zero is coming into the race off a debut win at Santa Anita in June in which he won by six lengths.
“He’s not a real big horse but he’s got a long stride and is very competitive,” trainer Doug O’Neill points out. “He’s quick and he’s athletic. We’re excited about him. He ran really well in his last out and we’re hoping to improve off that.”
Fionello also broke his maiden at Santa Anita in May. Trainer Steve Knapp says he wasn’t surprised by the first-out victory.
“He’s a really nice horse and I expect him to run another big race,” Knapp states. “He’s working very well coming into the race. He’s still green but there’s a lot more there.”
Trump Era is the other one in this field who did not win first time out. He finished second to Fionello in his debut and then won his next start. He’s out of the Ryan Hanson barn for owner and breeder Richard Barton.
Sammy Davis won at first asking at Del Mar opening weekend. He’s from the Sadler barn for Legacy Ranch. Desert Dawg sprung a huge upset in his debut, winning at Los Alamitos in June at 64-1.
The Graduation Stakes is a five-furlong dash that goes as Race 7 on the Friday twilight card. Probable post is 7 p.m.
Here’s the field from the rail with the jockeys and morning line odds: What’s a Good Name (Juan Hernandez, 6-1); Desert Dawg (Welfin Orantes, 15-1); Trump Era (Adrian Escobedo, 6-1); Sammy Davis (Hector I. Berrios, 9/5); Fionello (Armando Ayuso, 5-1), and Hero Or Zero (Umberto Rispoli, 8/5).
HERNANDEZ, GLATT LEAD STANDINGS AFTER THREE WEEKS OF RACING
Take a quick glance at the jockey and trainer standings at Del Mar and you might think you were back at the Bing Crosby meet last fall. Both Juan Hernandez and Mark Glatt, leading rider and trainer from 2024’s fall meet, lead their respective divisions after three weeks of the summer season.
Hernandez managed three victories last week and his 15 total wins are two better than Antonio Fresu, who actually caught Hernandez on Friday only to get blanked on Saturday while Hernandez was making two trips to the winner’s circle. They each had one win a piece on Sunday.
Hernandez and Fresu are the only two jockeys with over $1 million in earnings: Hernandez with $1,362,000 and Fresu with $1,002,236.
After Fresu comes Kazushi Kimura with 11-victories; Hector I Berrios and Armando Ayuso with nine; Abel Lezcano and Tyler Baze with five, and Umberto Rispoli, Kyle Frey and David Cohen with four.
Hernandez also leads all jockeys with three stakes wins. He had two last week, both on Saturday. He won with Kings River Road in the California Dreamin’ and Seismic Beauty in the G1 Clement L. Hirsch. Rispoli, Ayuso and Frey were the other stakes winning jockeys last week.
Glatt posted three wins last week to take sole possession of the top spot in the trainers’ standings. He now has nine wins followed closely by Bob Baffert and Peter Miller with eight. Michael McCarthy is next with seven followed by Phil D’Amato with six; George Papaprodromou with five and John Sadler, Peter Eurton and Tim Yakteen with four.
Baffert is the only trainer so far this summer with over $1-million dollars in earnings with $1,030,340. D’Amato led all trainers last week with a pair of stakes victories, the Real Good Deal Stakes with Speedy Wilson and the La Jolla Handicap with The Padre. D’Amato has notched a total of four stakes wins this summer at Del Mar.
Kirk and Judy Robison are still atop the owner’s standings with three wins at the meet, joined this week by Muir Hut Stables.
Average Field Size continues to be among the nation’s best at 8.75. After 50 races on the turf the AFS is 9.08. For stakes races the AFS is 8.36.
There’s been a 20-percent increase in the number of ‘Ship and Win’ participants in 2025 over last year. 64 horses have taken advantage of the program this year compared to 51 at this point in 2024. Eight have won a race. 23 Santa Anita horses have extended their stay in Southern California and run at Del Mar compared to 14 last year.
ONLINE DISPERSAL OF HARRIS HORSES TO BEGIN AUGUST 14
The major reduction of Harris Farms, the Thoroughbred operation of leading California breeder and owner John C. Harris, will be conducted on Fasig-Tipton Digital from August 14-19. Ninety horses will be offered as part of the reduction. They consist of horses of racing age and breeding stock, including mares with foals at foot.
“John Harris was a pillar of racing both in California and nationally,” said Leif Aaron, Fasig-Tipton Director of Digital Sales. “We are honored to be entrusted with the reduction of Mr. Harris’ breeding and racing stock, which he carefully cultivated for more than 40 years. These offerings present prospective buyers with a rare opportunity to access bloodlines that have seldom been available in the commercial marketplace.”
Harris, who recently passed away at the age of 81, led one of California’s largest and most prominent breeding, racing and stallion operations for more than four decades.
Photos, videos and all other buyer resources will be available when bidding for the sale opens on August 14. Prospective buyers may register to bid at digital. fasigtipton.com
ABEL LEZCANO RETURNS TO DEL MAR WITH NEW LEASE ON LIFE
A jockey’s desire to ride is very strong. That’s why you see them return from serious injuries without any hesitation. The time spent away from riding is grueling for them. The rehab is hard enough but not being able to get up on a horse and do what they love to do can be torture.
Now, imagine a rider being told by his doctors that he will never ride again. A real gut-punch for a veteran jockey like Abel Lezcano, who had been riding professionally for over a decade when he got the news from his doctor. The problem for any medical professional consulting a jockey is that it better be a very good reason.
A kidney transplant perhaps.
In 2020, the year of Covid, Abel Lezcano was diagnosed with non-functioning kidneys. One was operating at two-percent, the other not at all. Doctors blamed it on high blood pressure. He had been getting headaches but kept riding, battling through the fatigue.
“Because of the kidneys, my heart was pushing a lot and it grew two percent,” Lezcano says. “My legs were feeling weak, but because of my family I kept pushing.”
At first they thought it was Covid but when Maria noticed a marked change in her husband’s appearance, she took him to the emergency room where he got an entirely unexpected diagnosis.
“I’m at the hospital and I was telling the doctor, ‘I got to ride tomorrow’,” Lezcano states. “He’s looking at my wife and saying ‘No, he’s not.’ I was in shock.”
Lezcano had been riding horses since he was 11-years-old. He began riding in his native Panama but when he was 18 he went to Florida and started his U.S. racing career at Calder. It wasn’t long before the talented young jockey was riding stakes races at Saratoga.
“One day I see my name on the TV,” Lezcano recalls. “’Longshot winner’ it said. Wow.”
After seven years riding in New York he branched out into the Midwest and Kentucky and even did one season at Santa Anita and Del Mar in 2016. But it all came to a screeching halt in the summer of 2020.
It’s common knowledge that you only need one kidney to survive but for Lezcano the one he had working was barely working at all. They tried dialysis but that didn’t help, leaving just one option for the then 30-year old Panamanian rider. A transplant. Unfortunately no one in his immediate family (brothers and sisters and cousins) were a match.
“The doctor said it has to be blood (relatives),” Lezcano’s wife Maria explains. “So we thought family. Then one of the doctors in Miami asked me if I had done the test and I said ‘No, we’re not brother or sister’ and he said it doesn’t matter. So I did it and everything was a hundred percent (match).”
The operating doctor would say afterward that Maria’s kidney was one of the best and healthiest he had ever worked with and the transplant was deemed a success. Still, doctors told Abel ‘No more riding’ out of fear that he would fall off a horse and rupture the fine work the doctors had done.
Lezcano respected their decision but he couldn’t see himself walking away from riding.
“Only the one up there is going to tell me when I cannot ride,” Lezcano insists. “They tell me, ‘you can go back to the racetrack in one year and see the horses but do not get too close’.”
That was because his immune system was so low from the operation. So instead, Lezcano went to work building up his body. In two months he was on the exerciser, the device jockeys use to get back into riding shape.
“I started jogging a little bit,” Lezcano notes. “Finally, I’m running five miles a day.”
Six months after the operation, as opposed to the one year his doctors ordered, Lezcano visited the racetrack. He donned three masks and was constantly washing his hands.
Turns out one of the most difficult stages of Lezcano’s comeback was convincing trainers to give him a chance. He had not raced, let alone been up on a horse, in over a year and a half so trainers and owners were skeptical.
“No one wanted to give me a chance,” he says. “Two years and a kidney transplant, they thought ‘he’s not going to be the same’.”
New Years Day is often thought of as the time to start anew, get a fresh beginning. It was never more relevant than for Abel Lezcano in 2022. It was on that day that trainer Anna Meah gave Lezcano a mount at Turfway Park, his first since July of 2020.
“I was very nervous and excited,” Lezcano notes. “First time back. We finished fourth.”
He has been riding ever since, moving his tack around the Midwest until this summer when he came out west to Del Mar. He rang-up two winners on Opening Day and has five for the meet.
“I ride every race like it’s a stakes race,” Lezcano remarks. “Give me more opportunity, I’m one-hundred percent better.”
COOLING OUT: Rudy Cruz, assistant to trainer Philip D’Amato, reports that The Padre came out of his win in the La Jolla Handicap Sunday in good order. Announcer Larry Collmus had one of his patented gems when he called The Padre’s late charge to the wire “closing like Trevor Hoffman”…A couple of firsts on Sunday: Jockey Assael Espinoza, nephew of Victor Espinoza, notched his first win of the meet when he rode Robarando to victory in Race 6. It was also trainer Vann Belvoir’s first win of the session…Notable works this week: Monday – Sweet Azteca (5f, 1:00.20) and Madaket Road (6f, 1:11.40). Wednesday – Tamara (4f, :47.00). Thursday – Baeza (4f, :48.00); Express Train (4f, :49.00); Straight No Chaser (4f, :48.40); Gaming (6f, 1:11.60). Turf – Mrs. Astor (4f, :50.60).