Jockey Emisael Jaramillo has traded a position among the top 10 riders at Gulfstream Park for a similar spot at Santa Anita.
Jaramillo, 48, is riding at Santa Anita for the first time this winter. Through Sunday, he had won five races, good enough to rank in a tie for fourth in the standings after seven days of racing.
“I’m liking California,” Jaramillo said in an interview between races on Sunday.
Jaramillo has been a fixture at Gulfstream Park in recent years, and he gave up a leading position among jockeys at that venue to move across the country. At the current Gulfstream meeting that began on Nov. 27, Jaramillo was briefly the leading rider in the opening weeks. Even though he has not ridden at Gulfstream since Dec. 13, Jaramillo is tied for 11th with 10 wins through Tuesday.
At Santa Anita, Jaramillo’s five wins have occurred since Jan. 2. He had a three-win day last Friday, including a maiden race for 3-year-olds with Robusta, who led throughout a one-mile race and paid $51.60.
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On Sunday, Jaramillo won a $32,000 claiming race for maidens on Bear’s Board, and he finished second aboard 14-1 No Bad Beats in the Grade 3 Las Flores Stakes for fillies and mares at six furlongs.
Bear’s Board and No Bad Beats are trained by Doug O’Neill, who was instrumental in luring Jaramillo from Florida. O’Neill, one of California’s leading trainers and a two-time winner of the Kentucky Derby, is closely allied with jockey’s agent Tom Knust, who lost a job in early December when Antonio Fresu switched to Ron Anderson.
O’Neill, seeking another jockey for Knust, reached out to some Florida colleagues, who recommended Jaramillo, Knust said.
“Doug contacted him,” Knust said on Wednesday. “He said, ‘If you can come out here, I would use you.’ [Jaramillo] told Doug he wanted to come to California. When Doug called him, he couldn’t miss the opportunity. Once he made the decision, we talked.”
Jaramillo had four career mounts at Santa Anita, including three stakes, from 2016 to 2023 before moving to California last month. At the current meeting, Jaramillo has won only for O’Neill.
The wins have put Jaramillo in high demand, however. He is booked to ride 25 races from Thursday through Monday at Santa Anita – eight for O’Neill; three for Peter Miller; two for Richard Baltas, Brendan Galvin, Steve Knapp, and Hector Palma; and one apiece for Phil D’Amato, Ryan Hanson, Steve Miyadi, Leonard Powell, John Sadler, and Tim Yakteen.
On Saturday’s California Cup program, Jaramillo has mounts in three of the five stakes – Crunchy for Hanson in the Cal Cup Oaks, Fionello for Knust in the Cal Cup Derby, and Tequilaandtherapy for O’Neill in the Sunshine Million Filly and Mare Turf Sprint.
To remain in the top five, Jaramillo will likely need to ride for wide array of trainers to keep pace with Juan Hernandez and Umberto Rispoli, who currently lead the standings with eight wins apiece. Kazushi Kimura is third with seven wins. Jaramillo is tied with Mirco Demuro for fourth.
“For me, I’m very happy,” said Jaramillo, a native of Venezuela who has been based in the United States full-time since 2015. “It’s a good opportunity. Maybe I can get horses for stakes, and maybe a horse for the Kentucky Derby.”
Jaramillo finished second in the jockey standings at the Gulfstream Park spring-summer meeting that ended on Aug. 31, and he was third at the track’s summer-fall meeting that ended on Nov. 23. A former leading rider in Venezuela, Jaramillo finished 2025 with 154 wins, the 10th consecutive year he won more than 100 races. Jaramillo won a career-best 233 races in 2017.
Jaramillo is unlikely to reach that number in California this year. Aside from a competitive group of jockeys, the circuit does not have enough racing days for Jaramillo to break that mark. Gaining a place among the leading riders is more likely.
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