The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Hernandez and Miller have quick starts to weekend
ARCADIA >> Jockey Juan Hernandez and trainer Peter Miller came out of the gate running Friday as Santa Anita raised the curtain on its 18-day fall meet.
On the eve of a stakesfilled weekend today and Sunday at Santa Anita, Hernandez, who’s taken the Southland riding colony by storm since relocating from the Northern California circuit in mid-2020, scored a riding double.
Miller, who got off to a slow start during Del Mar’s recent summer meet but closed strong to finish tied with Doug O’neill in the trainer standings with 17 victories (two shy of co-leaders Bob Baffert and Philip D’amato), saddled two winners during the nine-race card.
“I started pretty good, thanks to my agent Craig O’bryan, the owners and the trainers who support me all the time,” Hernandez said. “We had a couple of winners today and a couple seconds, so that’s good. We’re off to a good start and hopefully we keep going.
“The important thing is to ride your horses good and give the horses all the chance to win the race. Sometimes you start a little slow, don’t have any winners for a couple of days, but then you pick it up and start winning more races. It’s always good to start with a couple of winners like today.”
Hernandez won Friday’s third race aboard Freedom Flyer ($10.60) for trainer Leonard Powell and doubled his fun in the seventh with a victory aboard the Miller-trained Kid Azteca ($6.20).
The 30-year-old Hernandez has done nothing but win at a high rate since coming south a little more than two years ago. He easily won the past two major riding titles in the Southland — Santa Anita’s winter-spring meet and Del Mar’s summer meet — and joined Flavien Prat earlier this year as the only riders in the past 27 years to win more than 100 races during a Santa Anita winterspring meet.
“It’s working out really good,” Hernandez said of his decision to move his business south. “My family is happy and I’m riding a lot of good horses, a lot of winners. I’m just gonna keep working hard and keep doing what I’m doing.”
While it’s nice to win riding titles, Hernandez is more focused on other goals. He’s got bigger fish to fry.
“It’s always good to be the leading rider, but I’m more focused to ride in good races, win those big races,” he said. “Hopefully I can get some good horses to ride in the Breeders’ Cup and the Kentucky Derby, all the important stakes races.”
Hernandez said he and his agent talked last week and he’s hopeful he’ll have some live Breeders’ Cup mounts next month.
“I have a couple of horses to ride and hopefully they’ll keep in good shape so they can run in those races,” he said. “I’m looking forward to winning one of those races one of these days.”
Miller, who celebrates his 56th birthday Sunday, won the fourth race with 7-1 outsider I Know Cash Flow ($17.80) before teaming with Hernandez for the victory in the seventh.
Action continues today at Santa Anita with six stakes races, including the $300,000 Grade I Awesome Again Stakes that gives the winner an all-expenses paid berth in the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland on Nov. 5.
Four $200,000 Grade II races will also be run — the John Henry Turf Championship, the Santa Anita Sprint Championship, the City of Hope Mile and the Eddie D. Stakes down the hillside turf course.
Two graded stakes are on tap for Sunday — the $200,000 Grade II Zenyatta and the $100,000 Grade III Chillingworth.
First post today is 12:30 p.m. and action gets underway Sunday at 1 p.m.