Juan Hernandez wins 6 races at Del Mar; Journalism works out

DEL MAR — The best bet on Saturday was Juan Hernandez.

The jockey won six races, including both features — aboard trainer Bob Baffert’s Desert Gate in the Grade III Best Pal Stakes and Heredia in the Grade II Yellow Ribbon Stakes — and the first four races of the Pick Five.

The six wins was a single-day career high for Hernandez and fell one win short of tying the Del Mar record of seven wins in a day shared by Victor Espinoza (2006) and Drayden Van Dyke (2018).

Hernandez’s bid to tie the Del Mar record fell short when he finished fifth aboard the favored Ridegold in the 10th and final race of the program.

Coming into Saturday, Hernandez, according to the Daily Racing Form, had scored five wins six times during his career — twice at Golden Gate Fields, three times at Santa Anita and once at Del Mar last September.

“Always, when I jump on the horse, I just try to win the race,” Hernandez said after his sixth win aboard Heredia. “I’m just going to jump on the next horse.”

Five of Hernandez’s six wins came on favorites. In order, he scored with Battle of Rouge ($4 in the second), Desert Gate ($2.40 in the Best Pal in the fourth), Privman ($4 in the sixth), Final Boss ($8 in the seventh), Broadway Unions ($4 in the eighth) and Heredia ($5.40 in the ninth). Final Boss was the lone non-favorite.

Half of Hernandez’s wins came on horses trained by Bob Baffert — Bottle of Rouge, Desert Gate and Privman.

And the final win came aboard Heredia in the $200,000 Yellow Ribbon — a 1 1/16-mile turf race for older fillies and mares. Trainer H. Graham Motion flew Heredia in from Saratoga for the Yellow Ribbon.

After starting second out of the gate, Heredia quickly grabbed the lead and was never headed – finishing 2¼ lengths ahead of Public Assembly (Antonio Fresu), the highest finisher of the four Phil D’Amato-trained entries in the field of eight.

The plan was not for Heredia to take the early lead.

“I was a little surprised Hernandez was in front,” said Alice Clapham, the assistant to Motion. “But he got her to settle and she was going easy. I thought one of D’Amato’s horses would go to the front and we’d settle in behind her.

“But when you’ve got one of the leading jockeys and he’s riding like Hernandez is right now, you just leave it up to him.”

“She took me to the front,” Hernandez said of Heredia. “She was really fresh in the post parade. I thought she was going to break sharp. It was her first time being on the lead. But she loved it. She was fire to the wire.”

Earlier, Hernandez rode Desert Gate to an 8¾-length victory over Pavlovian in the Best Pal – giving Baffert a 12th win and fourth in a row — in the six-furlong sprint for 2-year-old males.

“This horse is very professional since Day 1,” Baffert said of Desert Gate, a son of Omaha Beach who won his debut on June 13 at Santa Anita. “It’s nice to see these horses develop like this. Desert Gate is kind of quiet, but he broke well and that’s the most important part of these 2-year-old races, is that they come out clean.

“It’s nice to have these horses. We just have to keep him healthy and sound.”

“Desert Gate is usually pretty quiet,” said Hernandez. “But today he was on it. He was feeling good in the paddock. He came away good and was running comfortably all the way. He wanted to go at the three-eighths pole, but I got him to wait. Then we took off in the stretch.”

After extending his record for Best Pal wins, Baffert will go for a ninth win in Sunday’s female side of the weekend’s 2-year-old doubleheader — the Grade III Sorrento Stakes, which is the Del Mar prep for next month’s Del Mar Debutante.

Baffert’s Himika, a daughter of Curlin, is the morning-line 6-5 favorite. And Baffert will again have Hernandez in the saddle.Himika won her debut at Santa Anita in June by six lengths.

“I have a lot of horses to run here,” said Baffert. “A lot of 2-year-olds are going to start stacking up and we need to run them. I’m trying to get races into them.”

Himika’s competition in the six-filly field is a pair who shipped in from the east to run under local trainers. D’Amato will have second-favorite Dreaming of Alys (Fresu), who won her debut in June by 4¾ lengths at Laurel Park. Peter Miller has Mo’ Em Down (Rispoli), who won her second start by 9½ lengths at Churchill Downs.

There was an allowance race Saturday that had the resume of a stakes race. Five of the eight starters had graded stakes experience, including favorite Gold Phoenix, a two-time winner of the Grade II Del Mar Handicap.

But Final Boss, a 4-year-old son of American Pharoah, won with Astronomer second and Gold Phoenix third.

Notable

Preakness and Haskell Stakes winner Journalism worked out for the first time Saturday since returning from the East Coast three weeks ago. The Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes runnerup ran four furlongs in 48.4 seconds under rider Tony Gutierrez and finished the final quarter in 24 seconds. Owner Aron Wellman is still uncommitted about Journalism’s next race with the options being the Travers at Saratoga in two weeks or Del Mar’s premier event, the $1 million Pacific Classic, on Aug. 30.

• Privman, a Baffert-trained 3-year-old colt named for retired Daily Racing Form journalist Jay Privman, scored his second win in three weeks at Del Mar as the even-money favorite in the sixth race.